Windows 7 64-bit locking up

[Saga]

So, not sure if anyone else is having this issue, but my Windows 7 64-bit has been running great until a few days ago. Boots up fine, logs in fine, desktop loads all the icons, and then immediately I start having issues. The rest of the task bar doesn't load (with that arrow that brings up the rest of the icons), the dock is unresponsive when I click on either the Start menu or any of my icons, and the same goes for anything on my desktop that I try to open or view.

Control alt delete is also unresponsive, and if I wait a minute for the screen to come up and try to start the task manager to see what could possibly be causing the issue, it won't load.

I'd do a system restore but there are no restore points created, despite several updates I've done since then. The system runs fine in Safe Mode (w/ or w/o networking), so it has to be a process that's running in normal mode. I'll comb through my newly installed applications in the last week or so and see if something could be causing it.

I had a similar problem a while ago, and it had something to do with windows media player constantly trying to access or refresh a file or process, and the computer would get stuck in a loop, but that was only when media player was running.

I also did some other research online and a few people mentioned upgrading their NVIDIA drivers worked, so I did that and it fixed the problem for about a day, but it's right back to where it was before then. Also, I've blue screened twice in the last four days.

[Asai]

What's the specs on the pc you're running it on, and is it a legit copy?

[Saga]

DELL XPS M1530, legit copy of windows, bought it with the student discount thing for $30 from Microsoft. Did a digital download, but since I was upgrading from the 32-bit release candidate, I had to follow that guide to turn the DD from Microsoft into an ISO, burn that to a DVD, and boot from the CD drive on startup to install the version I have now.

Here's the specs:

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7600 Build 7600
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name MATT-PC
System Manufacturer Dell Inc.
System Model XPS M1530
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T6400 @ 2.00GHz, 1995 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Dell Inc. A12, 11/19/2008
SMBIOS Version 2.4
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume3
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7600.16385"
User Name Matt-PC\Matt
Time Zone Eastern Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 3.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 3.00 GB
Available Physical Memory 2.22 GB
Total Virtual Memory 5.99 GB
Available Virtual Memory 5.35 GB
Page File Space 3.00 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

[fishstix]

How long ago did you do the upgrade? going from 32 to 64 bit is messy, not even sure how that worked out. It might be best for you to reinstall from scratch if possible as a last resort

[Olo401]

Any chance you could run a HijackThis log for us?

[Kohan]

Having recently gone through a nightmarish list of problems with Windows 7, I highly suggest replacing every last driver related to your computer, even if they haven't been modified in a while. I went through an even more thorough version of this -- namely, downloading several versions of drivers, and installing from the oldest to the newest -- and it remedied my issues.

[Saga]

How long ago did you do the upgrade? going from 32 to 64 bit is messy, not even sure how that worked out. It might be best for you to reinstall from scratch if possible as a last resort

I upgraded a while ago -- in January -- so it's weird it's giving me trouble now. I also did a clean install, not the "upgrade" option that it gives you when you boot from the disk.

To Olo and Kohan, thanks for wanting to help but I just said fuck it and re-installed the OS. Was causing me too much trouble, and it's finals time right now so I just backed everything up on my external and did a clean install in about an hour. Running fine now. If this messes up again in the future I'll do what Kohan suggested and update each and every driver. Thanks again for the help.