whole system freezes or hangs, desperate help needed please

[jellybean]

Hi,

I am in desperate need of some advice or direction and a google search led me here.

My system keeps totally freezing up on me, i have a dell inspiron 1750 and running vista. everytime i try to access a picture by double clicking it either from an email or a foler it totally freezes, the mouse still moves but i cant do a thing with the laptop.

I have run ad aware and it found 635 threats which have been dealt with (well as far as ad aware told me)

i tried running my avast scanner but it kept freezing the whole system again when it got to c:\program files\windows photo gallery\imaging engine.dll on every occasion.

un installed that and installed SUPERanti spyware which stalls and frezzes the laptop at exactly the same point.

problem is i am in desperate need of my laptop and cant afford the time to send it back to dell at the moment as i have a uni exam paper that needs to be in next week and have all my work and notes on here.

can anyone help me please?