Help diagnosing system hang probem

I built my father-in-law's computer and it frequently hangs up and "My computer" is slow to show drives.

I suspect it is one of the million programs he has installed, but I don't know how to pinpoint the offending process or driver or whatever.

This thing ran smooth and fast without any issues when I handed it over to him, so I know it's something he has done to it.

Is there a good software solution that can tell me what is going on when the system hangs up? I know there is the event viewer, but I was hoping there was a better 3rd party option or other ideas from you guys.

Specs:

i7 920 @3.4ghz (temps <70c @ full load)
OCZ Platinum 3GB (3 x 1GB) DDR3 1600
GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS 1TB x 2 (firmware checked OK)
HIS Hightech H465FS512P Radeon HD 4650
Windows XP 32bit

 

Its actually quite new, this is actually the 2nd OS install he is working on. He blew up the 1st one and he has only had this 2nd one for about a month now.

The problem is he uses all the programs he has installed, so I can't just remove un-used ones.

I have run a virus scan with nod32 and he is supposedly clean, but I do need to clean the registry & spyware scan.

I was just hoping someone knew of a program that might expediate the process because I don't really want to spend 3 days over at his house uninstalling programs to see what is causing the issues.

Maybe I'll go through and start disabling everything non-critical through process explorer if no one knows of a 3rd party event monitoring solution.

 

Well looks like DomLuc's pretty much got you covered but it never hurts to run READ & RUN ME FIRST ... also, I had the same problem with a system I built yesterday and was getting various BSODs before I realised I hadn't flashed my BIOS to the most recent version ... after doing this I haven't gotten anymore ...