Windows 7 Locking Up & Bsod Issues

Hi everyone,
 
For the past year I've been experiencing some very annoying issues with my windows 7 installation.
 
In a nutshell, my computer has been locking up at seemingly random times. By locking up, I mean that the computer freezes, my music starts going super slow and glitchy, I can't move the mouse, all my videos freeze, etc. I press control+alt+delete and wait for about 4-5 minutes, and eventually my computer will go to the windows control+alt+delete screen, where I can then hit escape, go back to my desktop and have everything go back to normal. It is clear from what I see at this point that my computer has disconnected and reconnected to the internet - msn messenger will log out, I can see my computer reconnecting, and so forth.
 
The problem seems to happen most frequently when I download/upload torrents in utorrent, although it has happened many times with utorrent closed as well. It often happens when I'm playing Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 as well. I'm really not sure what the issue is, and I'm starting to get very annoyed by this.
 
More recently, I have left torrents on overnight to download and I wake up in the morning to find my computer either shut off, or recently restarted from a BSOD. I'm not sure if this is related to the previous problem, however I am very concerned.
 
If anyone could PLEASE offer any advice I would be very, very grateful.
 
Thank you.

 

My first reaction would be to the downloading of torrents.  What security are you using?  Whatever it is I'd do some full scans.  If not installed I'd also want to scan with Malwarebytes Anti Malware, MBAM.  Torrents are one of the biggest causes of infections around.
 
MBAM... The free version will do fine for this scan but the paid version is well worth the money.
http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free/

 

Right now I'm using NOD32. I've ran it several times and it's always come back clean. I only download torrents from a private tracker, I'm thinking this may prevent some of the infections? It's a well known tracker that I trust, I don't think I've had problems with torrents from there before.
 
I'll give MBAM a run this afternoon and see what it comes back with, thank you for the advice.
 
I should also mention that upon starting my computer this morning and last night after the BSODs, windows action center is reporting 'video hardware' issues. Youtube videos seem to be causing my computer a lot of difficulty too, for instance even scrolling my mouse over them causes my computer to slow down a lot. At this point I'm thinking perhaps my video card and/or wireless network card are malfunctioning? My windows install is less than a year old, as is the video card.

 

From your last post it is quite possible that your graphics card could be having issues.  Are you running the most current drivers?  Also, do you possibly have another card that you could try even if older.  About the the easiest way to narrow down a hardware issue is to replace the hardware or try the item in question in a different system.