Laptop is freezing & hanging -- Need help geeks!

Well...I've searched ALL forums high & low for a solution and I've come up with NOTHING. I have:

Toshiba Satellite Laptop
Intel Core 2
1.66 GHz
0.99 GB RAM

It freezes up after 5 - 30 minutes and the mouse doesn't move, the Caps Lock light in non-responsive and a hard-reset is my only option.
Most of the time, however, it hangs and I can move the mouse and my Caps Lock lights acts accordingly whenever I press it. I can even eject my CD drive, close it back up and hear it run. I am unable to do anything but that. I can't minimize, access the tsk mgr, etc...
My processes look good (although I consistently have 9 SVCHOST.EXEs running lately).
And it does this at COMPLETELY random times.
It doesn't happen during operation of a particular application.
I've tested it with several apps running and a few test runs with merely freecell running...it will freeze at all different times with both test styles...nothing is consistent.

Here's what I've done:

I followed MG Malware removal to a tee and all is clean.

Memtest 86+ = Clean
Chkdsk /f = Clean
McAfee = Clean
Scannow = Clean
Avg Temperature = 44 Degrees C
Internally = Dust Free
Cooling Fan = Fully Functional
Event Viewer = Clean (aside from COM+ System Application not being able to start up...which I believe is non-essential...right?)
I even modified my startup programs through MSCONFIG down to the bare essentials and that isn't it.
And I updated all my drivers.


If you need ANYTHING else, I will do my best to provide it.

Thanks so much for your help - in advance

-Trevor

 

Some preliminary questions.

What operating system?
How long ago did this start happening? Was it sudden or were there other symptoms first?
Has there been any recent hardware or software changes to the machine?

 

This could be software incompatibility. Or residue of old uninstalled programs. In both cases security programs are the most troublesome. Spybot Search & Destroy have compatibility problems with IE8 for example.

What browser do you run?

 

Boot it in safe mode and see if it does it there ... and yes an OS would be good ...

 

Ah! Okay sorry...I was a little flustered and omitted some of the essentials.

I'm running XP Media Center Edition

This was maybe...a week ago it started...

It was sudden. No pre-emptive symptoms.

And that's a negative on the software or hardware changes. Not even as much as a download.

I typically run Firefox but converted to Opera 9.6 :cool --post freezing

And YES!, a big one! I've booted in Safe Mode several times without any problems!

 

Ok so we know that its not an essential process then .... could you put a HiJack this log up?

 

Will do. It'll be later tonight!

 

well i posted them but it said its waiting for admin review....is there a trick to getting HiJack logs up?