Games Lag And Small Freezes: Malware?

[Glass_Eye]

I'll just get right into the problem, sorry if this is too long:

About two weeks ago I noticed that my computer had shut off while I was out of the house for about an hour. The next day or so it turned off while I was using it, so I figured it was overheating due to dust, as that has happened a few months prior. I decided to wait until I could have some help from someone who knew more about computers than me to help dust it out. However, for the next three days someone came over and used my computer for Fallout 3 for about three days straight with no shut off problems. They returned shortly after, and about four days ago I dusted it out.

I had not played any games on the computer two days prior to cleaning it out, but I ran Fallout 3 the day after it was cleaned. I noticed that when the game started up, the entire screen froze. I could move the cursor, but the loading circle on it's upper right was not spinning. It does this for a few seconds then starts up. When entering the game, it plays fine for about ten seconds, and then lags horrible. The lag then lifts for a second or two and then returns and continues until I shut the game down.

Every game does this. Though ones that run off servers (such as Team Fortress 2) don't seem to lag, though they still freeze for that few seconds om startup. I then noticed that my computer itself does the small freeze during startup, which I am almost sure never happened before.

It was about two days ago I noticed my computer slightly froze on startup, so I performed a quick-scan with Avast!, with no threat detected. Today I noticed my browser (firefox) also slightly froze when first being started-up. So I full system scanned, and still found no threat detected.

My computer doesn't seem to have a problem reading my graphics card, and it can still read all my memory and such, so is this some sort of malware or something else?

I run Windows Vista with:
581 GB of Disc Space
Intel Core 2 Quad CPU with 2.34 GHz
8.00 GB of RAM
NVIDIA GForce GT 120

Any help is appreciated.

[Gargamel360]

For second opinion, download, update and run>>http://www.malwarebytes.org/

[Glass_Eye]

For second opinion, download, update and run>>http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Thanks. Quick scan shows 2 Broken.OpenCommand in registry data. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT

[Gargamel360]

http://forums.malwarebytes.org/index.php?showtopic=6249

[Glass_Eye]

http://forums.malwarebytes.org/index.php?showtopic=6249

Thank you once again. So I just get this result on a full scan as well so am I facing something unrelated to malware or just something difficult to detect?

[Gargamel360]

Those Mbam posts on their forums (that wasn't the only one related to that detection) would indicate it is not bad.  But I could not say for certain, you might want to direct that question to their forums, they would know for sure. 

These things started after a blowout of your PC, so it is possible it caught a static shock (especially if you used something like a vacuum blower), resulting in some kind of hardware damage, or the initial overheats could be damaging also.

Which would be a shame, given your system specs which I am envious of.

To be triple sure you are clean, this is the resident malware removal specialist's guide>>http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=53253.0