Vista user only able to use safe mode

[e evans]

Hello: All was well last night except unit was running slower than usual. This morning, I booted up as usual but in a minute or so, everything froze up, and 'hourglass' showed unit was 'working'. Could move the cursor but no response when I tried to close a window, click on the 'start' button, etc. After about 5 minutes, I tried to hit ctrl-alt-delete and got a blank screen after about 30 seconds or so. Then everything came back but was still frozen, and the window message indicated 'not responding'. I shut down using the power button, powered up after 10 seconds and got into 'safe mode with networking' to check email and such. Am in safe mode now to ask for help. So far, have tried the following from safe mode:

- deleted temp files, cookies, etc.
- ran 'spybot search destroy' and deleted files that showed in red as suspect
- tried to do a disk defrag (heard it works in safe mode; just doesn't show it's working)
- tried a system restore but the prior backup had been overwritten

I do have Mcaffe installed. So, I'm dead in the water. Sorry I'm not a very experienced user, but could use some help. Any thoughts?

Thx!