Thanks.
The heating point hasn't been suggested yet and I will give it a try.
However I suspect the problem is with a bot program or other malware. I have scanned with nearly everything readily available and have not yet found anything.
The only thing is a CA online scan found a browser hijacker peopleonpage.apropos in a zonemap\domains key in the registry, but the behavior is not hijacker behavior. I also found that the zonemap keys are full of ad related sites which I presume are sites that are being blocked from entering the computer by ie-spyads or spyware blaster etc.
CA also found netzip, fresh devices, and network1.popups in zonemap\domains, but I am not seeing behavior that I would relate to these sites.
In the meantime, the computer is close to becoming unusable with freeze or reboot every few minutes.