Computer freezing, but not immediately

[notamused]

I'm not sure if this is the correct forum, but I have to start somewhere.

I recently got infected with a Trojan virus and got a ton of help getting rid of it from your site and Evil in particular.  I'm confident that we got rid of the virus, but with some of the things I did before I found your site, I think a file got lost...

What I did before I found your site:
1) I downloaded and uninstalled a Computer Associates Anti Virus trial
2) I downloaded the Google pack with Spyware Doctor, uninstalled, and reinstalled

(I have no idea if either of these is relevant, but I wanted to give you as much info as I could)

Now:  The computer runs fine for awhile.  The screensaver kicks in and works fine.  At some point the screensaver stops and at some point after that, the computer will not open new apps.  What I mean is that the screen looks normal, but if I double click on something like Firefox, I get the hourglass for a few seconds and it goes away.  Firefox does not open.  Nothing does.

If I go to restart the computer, I get a message that explorer.exe is not responding.  If I "end" that, then the computer continues to shut down until it reaches the message that says "saving your settings".  The activity light seems to move back and forth as though something is going on, but the "saving settings" message stays up.  I have let it go as long as 10 minutes before unplugging.

When I start the computer again, it functions fine until sometime after the screensaver kicks in.  I'm not sure this is screensaver related.  I think that there might be some program trying to update or run and it is stuck looking for something I may have deleted during my virus cleanup.

There are several entries in AutoRuns that say "file not found"

Help!  Any way to diagnose?

[cryhelp]

We need more info.  See:  http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,33323.0.html

Next: Now:  The computer runs fine for awhile.  The screensaver kicks in and works fine.  At some point the screensaver stops and at some point after that, the computer will not open new apps.
Do you mean the screensaver kicks in while you are working?
Have you run anti spyware lately?
Do You have more than one anti virus program running?

[notamused]

Thanks for jumping in.  I actually think I got it figured out and fixed.

To answer one of your questions, the computer would not freeze up while I was working, but in fact when it was on and idle.

A symptom that I forgot to report (didn't think about it) was the fact that I had Windows Updates that were "ready to install".  Two of them seemed to fail whenever I went to install updates.  One was IE7 and the other was Microsoft Framework .NET.

It bothered me that they both failed, so I went to the Microsoft Update site and tried to download the update from there.  It also failed, but the site let me know some of the reasons why they might fail, including having a a current Framework .NET file that could have been damaged or corrupted with all of the uninstalling and deleting I had been doing dealing with a recent virus.  I downloaded a Framework .NET app from the Update site, fixed the file, and was able to complete the updates.

The freezing problem seems to have gone away ever since (one day).

Thanks again for looking into this for me.  I mention the fix in case anyone else has trouble with failing updates.

[cryhelp]

Glad you got it solved.  Thanks for posting back.