Windows 7 - help is this a hardware problem?

I had to reset my computer to factory settings awhile back. I've done nothing to it except download advanced system optimizer and windows antivirus. This was a miracle alone due to the fact that my Computer locks up for extensive periods of time and will barely ever finish a task; such as transferring a picture to USB drive, scan, or any click command. It has never done this before the reset. I've had to reset my laptop several times before, it got to a point everytime I slipped up and left the battery unplugged with it running, start up repair would start and just about everytime could not fix itself leaving me no choice but to reset. Quite aggravating. With spurts of patience here and there I've managed to update all drivers, scan, use windows solution and nothing works. Sometimes it will run smooth for two minutes, then it's waiting and quite possibly never accomplish anything. I can't get my pictures which is my own fault for not backing up. I've tried linking my other laptop to get the pictures and the bar never moves once it gets towards the end. Any ideas?

With a laptop you do not have a lot of hardware debugging choices. But I would try this:

1. Take one of the memory Dimms out and run it on just one Dimm. If it is still on the blink, try the other Dimm. If it runs OK, you know it is the memory Dimm in question and can change that.

2. Burn a Linux CD - e.g. Puppy because it is small. Run that from the CD reader (change the BIOS boot sequence). If that works well, you know it is a Windows problem and we can dig further.

You can also run step 2 before step 1 if that is more convenient. If none of those steps shed any light on the problem, we'll have to regroup. There can be many other causes.

In addition work through these troubleshooting steps.

It may well be an OS problem if you did much tweaking with that optimizer as Windows 7 will not tolerate compound tweaking - it is too lean of an OS already.

I'm not very computer smart to start I'm fixing to try taking out the dimm. what is compound tweaking?

I think Greg was referring to this:
Those so called 'optimizers' are bad news indeed.

yea I understood that, I'm curious as to what compound tweaking refers to. I use the advanced system optimer mainly as a registry cleaner, defraggger, and spyware removal. I haven't messed with anything else except for the driver updates. I use it on my other laptop as well do I need to get rid of it?

OK I have removed both dimms one at a time and it still locks up. however it did seem like there was a performance improvement with just the second one in. is it possible both could be messed up? I don't have a disc to burn onto at the moment to try the link. I should have a USB somewhere.

You can download Universal USB installer and burn the ISO file to a USB drive, then boot from the USB

is the ISO file the puppy link? I've never done this before If I can ever manage to download it (can barely load a page at the moment) how do I boot it from that file? As I'm trying to navigate around now it seems to be getting worse, my mouse is lagging and the sound is crackling....

I have downloaded the USB installer and chose windows 7 installer but I don't know where to select my ISO file for step 2