I finally did a restore to factory defaults which also formats the C:/ partition and reinstalls the PC back to the original factory settings and software. Then I proceeded to reinstall all of the other software. So far so good. I have done most of the Microsoft upgrades (there are over 130 of them) and brought IE back up to 10. However, I see there are some more upgrades that need to be installed, so maybe I have not hit the bad one yet. I think I will install the rest one at a time and see what happens. Maybe that way I can figure out which one is causing the problems.
Have you tried upgrading your graphics and chipset drivers?