Blue Waiting circle takes forever to do anything

Depending on what I'm doing, usually opening folders, the blue waiting/working circle appears and locks up the computer. When I have a folder open, a blue line appears over/on the address bar to show its (more or less) thinking. Thats when it locks up and says, "not responding". If I mouse over anything on the screen it will highlight them. After a while it wont let me click on anything. This'll happen for several minutes. Even ctrl+alt+del wont work. The screen goes black and tells me the ctrl+alt+del function isn't available. Several sites I've looked up says the hard drive is going bad. I've run: Norton Internet Security, Malewarebytes, Superantispyware and Ccleaner. When I restart the computer, the problem starts again after 15 minutes to an hour after that. Also, (a few times) I've had to restart by holding down the power button for 5-10 seconds, not the best way but it works.
OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name
System Manufacturer eMachines
System Model ET1831
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E5400 @ 2.70GHz, 2700 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date AMI P01-A1, 9/14/2009
SMBIOS Version 2.5
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name
Time Zone Eastern Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 4.00 GB
Available Physical Memory 1.23 GB
Total Virtual Memory 8.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 5.13 GB
Page File Space 4.00 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

I'm not sure if I'm starting too many tasks at one time for my computer to keep up.
I just found out that 'smart defrag 2.0' had been running (I think) the whole time the computer was having this problem. I changed the settings and now my machine seems to be running better but the problem still happens.