Vista freezes, mouse moves, ok in safe mode

Hi, I have a dell inspiron about a year old. Yesterday morning my laptop froze (normal functions no new updates or other installs), i did a hard boot, windows repair did its thing, vista started again but within a minute of loging in, it froze. hard boot again, chckdsk ran and fixed some stuff but once again it froze after a minute vista opening.

i tried systerm restore and no point in past would work (error saying it failed and after trying other stuff all points disappeared). i ran in safe mode with networking and did clean boot without any of microsoft stuff or the background/startup programs and it worked without freezing but computer was essentially useless since internet, etc didnt work. once i turned the microsoft services back on, it froze again. i did again without background or startup and with microsoft and it froze. i ran malware, etc and there was nothing. i did checkdsk and it was good, did memory test and it was good, ran sfc /scannow and would freeze at 58% and say it couldnt finish so ran sfc /verifyonly and saw some tcpmon.ini issue but i read thats common and not a big deal. did some tcp flush stuff i saw online didnt work. i tried popping in dell vista dvd but there is no repair option or upgrade since i have sp2, just an install option. unistalled bunch of stuff and still didnt work. there are no warnings or exclamations next to any devices in device manager.

so it seems from playing with msconfig boot options that its not background or startup programs since it ran fine with those on (microsoft services off) but would freeze with microsoft services on. anyone have ANY suggestions? your help would be greatly appreciated.

Go to search type device manager and look for any yellow warning markers
Download and run malwarebytes, a full scan after you update
Run antivirus scan
Make sure that you are not over heating.
Try a clean boot You said that you tried this and it worked. Follow instructions to find cause.
Make sure PSU is working properly
If overclocking, restore to original
Test hard drive at company website.
Download and run CCleaner.
Go to even viewer and look for errors

Check back and I will get you some links that you can use for the above
http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/topic/246994-guide-to-using-memtest86/
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135
http://malwarebytes.org/
http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

This seems like a lot, but go slow, ask questiions and you will be up and running

Thanks for the suggestions. I will run them and get back to you. Is there an antivirus program i can install in safe mode?

Try safe mode with networking and see how it goes.
This is one of the best for windows and it is free.
http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/
When you are up and running use the free Security Essentials with Malwarebytes and the Windows Firewall. You will be in good shape.

I tried essentials and it said it would not install in safe mode. I did run malware without issues in safe mode. I will try a clean boot and see if i can install essentials. thanks.

I have what seems to be the same problem.

On a standard off-the-shelf HP Pavillion, starting a few days ago, on the 25th. After reboot the system lets me log in, desktop comes up, then within a minute it slows to a crawl and then freezes. Some times blue screens and reboots.

I tried system restores without any luck; scanned for hardware failures and found none. Like the original poster I was able to boot into safe mode and everything seemed fine there, but as soon as I went back to regular mode - no luck.

I restored to original factory settings and reinstalled the basic stuff - MS Security Essentials, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice. Restored my files from backup. Everything seemed to be fine.

Windows went through one large batch of 80 "important" updates and everything was OK. Then it found another dozen or so updates, and after installing those the problem is back.

It seems like one of the recent updates hosed the system, but if that's the case there would be more than two of us complaining...

Help?

http://www.vistax64.com/crashes-debugging/282419-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html

Start your own thread. Follow instructions and you will be helped

Sorry if I violated protocol by responding to someone else's thread.

I'm not able to boot into even safe mode now, so there's little worthwhile information I can put into a new thread of my own.

For the sake of the original poster, though: after trying repeatedly with safe mode, recovery, etc., I popped in an Ubuntu CD so that I'd at least be able to copy my files off the computer. As soon as it loaded Ubuntu told me that the hard drive is failing and gave me details. Very interesting considering that the Windows tools (at least, those provided by HP) say the HD is fine.

In case you want to try it:
Use Ubuntu Live CD to Backup Files from Your Dead Windows Computer - How-To Geek

TY for using the last breath of the computer to help others.