Windows 7 Running Slow And Freezing?

A few days ago I was working on a paper and after finishing, as opposed to turning the laptop off, saved the paper and let my laptop go into sleep mode. I've done this before and it's never hurt anything, but the next day when I turned my laptop back on it had troubles starting back up. I eventually had to take the battery out and restart it that way. After that, as the week progressed, my laptop just kept lagging more and more. It got to the point where I would just have to let it sit for twenty or so minutes, and then it would work fine from then on out. Knowing something was up, I decided to see if I needed to download any new updates, which I figured was possible since I just got my laptop back from GeekSquad about a few weeks ago for a different problem, and it was behind on updates then since it had been turned off for three weeks.

So, to cut a long story short, I downloaded the "vaio entertainment platform library updater, version 1.0.2.08150" because my Vaio Update was telling me it was important I have it but it couldn't download it for some reason. The install wizard for it told me I needed to restart my computer, and so I did, and when I turned it back on it got stuck on a black screen. Eventually, I took the battery out so it would offer me the option of going into Safe Mode due to improper shutdown. I did, and tried to use "misconfig" to at least get me back to my desktop. After messing with that for a bit, and using "System Restore" to return my laptop to how it was before I installed the update, I eventually could get back to my desktop. My laptop automatically downloaded three new updates using Windows Update, and it went back to that same black screen when I restarted it, so I had to repeat the whole procedure so I could get back to my desktop, which I finally did.