Win 7 Lock Up issues

Hello,

I have had Win 7 for several months, and recently it started locking up. Sometimes it will lock up for a bout 30 seconds to up to 2 minutes, other times I have to reboot it in order to do anything.

What I have done so far:
1. Re-installed 3 times
2. Checked drivers
3. Removed all components and installed them again one at a time to try and see if it was hardware related - no luck
4. Ran several different virus scans (Norton, McAfee, MS Security Essentials, IObit, House Call)... Checked Malware also.
5. Checked for Win Update

When it locks up: I am mostly playing online, Neverwinter Nights 2 (most recently) and it locks up, but it will also lock up while just surfing the net or even just looking at the desktop.

Other things I have noticed...
1. Just today, it stopped registering one of my hard drives, won't show up at all, if I restart... it sometimes comes back, but if the computer goes into sleep mode.. and I wake it up.. it is usualy gone again.
2. Some of my desktop Icons are all jacked.. not sure if it's tied in with the missing drive or not. The icons look like the old school win 98 icon or something... if used, the program will still open, but it's just weird that it is doing that.

System Specs:
Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000
RAM: 8 Gig
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX
ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe motherboard
3 Hard Drives - none of them special (2-150Gb and one 250Gb)

Any help would be greatly appreciated cause this lock up stuff is becomming extermly annoying.

Did you download the antivirus removal tool from the website of each antivirus program you tried before installing the next one? Have you tried Malwarebytes ? If not, download it from www.malwarebytes.org, install it and let it update it's definitions and restart your computer into Safe Mode by pressing F8 key on your keyboard. In Safe Mode run a Full Scan with Malwarebytes and remove any infections it finds. Also, try whatever antivirus program you use in Safe Mode. After any infection are removed, open up Computer and right click on each hard drive, select Properties click on Tools and then click on Check Now to run Check Disk. Make sure you check both boxes in the windows that opens and let Windows Schedule it to run on computer restart. Now restart your computer. If your drivers are up to date. These steps should fix your problem.

If your hardware is failing it could explain loss of connection to the HD