Laptop freeze in normal mode on search & randomly on web; disk access halts

[rockpeter]

My old HD crashed, and I installed a new one and spent a week re-installing everything (drivers, my weekly MS backup, programs, 120+ MS updates). Everything ran smoothly for a week or so, then I noticed the computer would randomly restart at various times when unattended.
Now, in the past week I have encountered random freezing in normal mode, especially when accessing the internet, and upon using the search feature in the start menu (then disk access halts). I can currently only use the computer in safe mode.
I tried running AVG and MBAM, and found nothing (?). I tried several restore points, which all seemed to work for a while, but then I would encounter the same issue. (I thought it might be an update to the .NET framework, but no.)
I thought it might be a driver conflict, because I may have inadvertently installed some unnecessary drivers when re-installing the system on the new HD. I uninstalled one, but found no joy; and I have had trouble recognizing if any others need uninstalled, even after examining the event viewer. It seems like something is infected...
Thanks in advance for any advice and assistance.
-Peter in Kansas City
Dell Inspiron 1525 / Windows Vista SP2 / 3GB RAM

 

[rockpeter]

Laptop freeze apparently HD issue (?)

Last edited by mailpup; 9 Hours Ago at 08:33 AM.. Reason: Logs removed per Broni's request. Not malware issue.

Based on this action, I'm assuming someone determined that I don't have a virus, and perhaps they looked at a later post with disk test results to surmise that I have a HD issue. If I am wrong, please let me know. I appreciate the feedback. (And if indeed this thread is in the wrong location, please relocate.)

For those who happen upon this post, I *think* I narrowed the problem down to a faulty hard drive (or bad sectors) - apparently my auto defrag was accessing something that my HD didn't want to share (or couldn't access). [I was hoping to determine if this was indeed the case, but the additional test logs and progress posts have been removed.]

Thanks again for any feedback/advice... -Peter