Windows 7 programs not responding

Laptop is 4 months old running Windows7 (64). For the past 2 weeks I have had issues which started out with, upon boot up, splash screen starting and then black screen with white cursor showing for sometimes up to 20 minutes before desktop would appear. Intermittent issues with programs not responding. HDD light flashing incessantly. Ran several different troubleshooting programs and eventually system began to boot quickly (for the most part) but programs began to become even more unresponsive- including trying to go into control panel- receiving "not responding".
System has been defragmented and just went through all the Malware/virus troubleshooting on MajorGeeks with nothing being found. When booting in safe mode I have been able to access programs that I could not access during normal boot up. However, today I had issues with start up not working during safe mode boot. Ran start up recover in safe mode but it stated it could not fix the issues. Rebooting several more times and eventually system started. Not sure what logs would be helpful, so I need assistance in this area. Event viewer has all kinds of errors, but I have no idea how to read this or how to post this log to the forum.
Thanks for the assistance.

 

Also, did not mention, but I have had issues with anti-virus turning off on it's own. This happened with 2 different anti-virus software programs. Just happened again right before posting this.