U 32 Bit SP1: Long Boot, Freeze on Firefox, Thunderbird, Word etc.

Hello All,

I have an Acer Aspire 5734Z running Windows 7 Ultimate SP1. In the last week the initial OS boot (from the time I see the cursor until the long screen appears) has increased in length from 10 or so seconds to around a minute. More importantly, though, several applications I routinly use - Firefox, Thunderbird, Office and Sumatra, no longer function - when loaded the latter two go immediatly to "not responding", then the only dialouge I am given is the "end proccess" box. With Firefox the freeze happens when I attempt to search Google; with Thunderbird when I attempt to reply to an e-mail.

I have tried various solutions from other threads (I am down to running just MSE, no other antivrus software), my drivers are all up to date and my registry is defraged.

From my last boot, my event viewer shows the following errors in Windows Logs->System (with the system booting up at 2:13, all times within 1 minute of the boot and in order):

*WLAN Extensibility Module has failed to start.

Module Path: C:\Windows\system32\Rtlihvs.dll

Error Code: 126



*The Realtek11nSU service failed to start due to the following error:

The system cannot find the path specified.



*The Firebird Guardian - DefaultInstance service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s).



*Microsoft Antimalware Real-Time Protection feature has encountered an error and failed.

Feature: Behavior Monitoring

Error Code: 0x80004005

Error description: Unspecified error

Reason: The filter driver requires an up-to-date engine in order to function. You must install the latest definition updates in order to enable real-time protection.



*The HomeGroup Provider service depends on the Function Discovery Provider Host service which failed to start because of the following error:

The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.



At this point I am out of ideas, and don't want to reformat the system (as I have too much saved data in Dreamweaver, Filezilla and other such programs). Any additonal information that would be helpful, hardware, software, whatever, just ask (and maybe point me to how to find it).

Any advice is greatly appreciated!



Regards,

BarabasKid

PS - Apologies if I put this in the wrong forum: admins feel free to move it to the appropriate category.

BACK UP ANY IMPORTANT DATA RIGHT NOW.

Then check your harddisk. Don't bother with chkdsk - download the appropriate tool for your drive from its manufacturer's website (Seagate, Western Digital, etc.) and run a full diagnostic with it.

(If you don't know what harddisk you have, look in Control Panel -> Device Manager and expand the Disk Drives tree.)

I backed up all my data before I started trying to fix the issue :)

My HD is Western Digital; the thorough test came back without any errors:

Test Option:EXTENDED TESTModel Number:WDC WD1200BEVS-75RST0Unit Serial Number:WD-WXE307D33804Firmware Number:04.01G04Capacity:120.03 GBSMART Status:PASSTest Result:PASSTest Time:16:35:43, September 30, 2011
Any other ideas?