OS freezing after installing updates

Well I followed all the advice and installed 8 important and recommended updates one at a time and then rebooted when instructed to do so. Unfortunately. my computer restarted and then got stuck at the desktop and would not unfreeze. I managed to turn it off at the tower and then left it for 10 minutes, rebooted and tried again. In all I tried 4 times and it froze solid each time. I then managed to do a system restore to before I downloaded and installed the updates and then scheduled a disc check at the next restart and it
found and repaired some files. It would appear to be working ok now but I daren't install the updates again. Any advice please, I guess that I must be doing something wrong but I really don't know what! Thanks again in advance.

I have managed to install the updates and the computer no longer freezes and I Just thought it might help others who may have had the same problem, to tell what I did ! I did a disc clean, defrag, removed some programmes I no longer use and then removed Google updater and google desktop from my start menu. Having done all that I then did a disc check and then I installed the updates 1 by 1,restarting the computer after each installation. I have also just installed Firefox 3 with no problems so far. I shall now take a week to recover!!

My personal feeling is that it was a very good idea

That is useless and a waste of time.
My personal advise on WU is:
Never use automatic updates.
Always check for updates and let me choose whether to download and install.
Then i install the updates i need when i want (usually once a week unless i found a particular update as essential) and when no programs are running, especially explorer and ie which avoids eventual problems and reboot though for some updates reboot is necessary.
Never had a problem!