Vista Freezing shortly after start up

[vancity]

Over the last couple of days my laptop has been freezing, nothing will work altough on some occasions the orange light at the front suggests its still doing something or at least thinking about it.

Having read various posts i have played around with the programs starting on start up but that only seems to push back the freezing by a few minutes.

I keep trying to run scans both in safe mode and regular but none of them get as far as completion due to freezing....the only thing that has had a recent update was windows defender - could this be the issue?

Its a sony, 2.26 ghz, 4gb ram, 32 bit operating system.

Any thoughts would be great!

[Allan]

What is new or different since the last time everything worked properly (ie, new hw, new sw, virus, error, etc)?

[vancity]

Other than the database updates for avast/super anti spyware, the windows defender update that was done on friday is the only thing.

The only error message i have seen has been when I ctrl alt delete to get task manager up and it says something along the lines of security options not available - then leaves a blank dark screen.

it has for the last half hour run without any freezing but i have only been on google chrome browsing. which would lead me to think its something to do with one of the security elements??

[Allan]

I think Windows Defender is useless and a resource intensive. Personally, I disable it on all systems (you have to set the Windows Defender Service to Disabled). You can also disable SuperAntispyware and just use it as an on-demand scanner - just run your AV as a resident utility.

[vancity]

I'll give that a go and see how things develop

[vancity]

So I thought things had been resolved as the laptop ran fine while just general browsing...however it seem everytime i try to run another program be it a security scanner or media player it once again goes into meltdown and freezes.

I have tried to do a system restore to a point before friday however it comes back with 'system restore unsuccessful'

Does anyone have any further thoughts?

Cheers.

[Allan]

Let's check for malware
Please follow the instructions in the following link and post your logs in the thread you create (NOT in this thread):
http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,46313.0.html

[vancity]

The laptop now will not load windows at all, when going into system recovery options it does not have a driver selected (none are shown) then gives the option to load drivers....initially it comes up with system 32 but what do i select?