Windows 7 - strange slow downs and freezing ever since upgrading to SSD

I upgraded to a OCZ Vertex 3 120GB boot drive about a month ago and I can't say I've had many problems until about a week ago when it happened for the first time. I was using word and had multiple windows open(half a dozen) when it started to show signs of slow down. What was weird was that it happened slowly, feature by feature, first the windows were frozen and could not be manipulated in any way then slowly more and more things were unusable until everything completely froze. I couldnt even Ctrl + Alt + delete to the task manager, it was just unresponsive. I waited for probably a good 10 minutes just to see if anything would respond and finally restarted my PC. The drive was not recognized the first time and just booted to my original mechanical boot drive that I now have set as the second boot drive. i restarted again and it recognized the SSD, and booted back normally... this has now happened a second time, about 30 minutes ago. HELP!

Malware?

Don't think so.

It just happened again, complete freeze and it doesn't seem to be able to recover. I am wondering if it's something not configured properly, like TRIM or something related to SSD operation.