Windows 7: "Program" has stopped working"?

I'm using Windows 7 and for the last couple days I've been flooded with all sorts of "Program" has stopped working" notifications, from everything from the nvidia control panel to windows explorer to various processes that I don't even recognize that must be other ordinary windows processes. These just happen without warning, and when I restart my computer, I get about ten of them right on startup, everything is crashing and I don't know why?


Operating System
Windows 7 Ultimate (x64) Service Pack 1 (build 7601)

Processor
3.20 gigahertz Intel Core i5-3470
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache
6144 kilobyte tertiary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (4 total)
Not hyper-threaded

Board:
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. H77M-D3H
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. F5 03/29/2012

RAM:
Slot 'ChannelB-DIMM0' has 8192 MB

Display:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 [Display adapter]
Samsung SyncMaster [Monitor] (24.0"vis, s/n YCUYHVDZ702086, July 2010)

Audio:
NVIDIA High Definition Audio
VIA High Definition Audio

 

Have you scanned with Malwarebytes? It almost sounds like it could be a file infector. I hope not.

Also, maybe run command prompt as an administrator, type "sfc /scannow" without the quotes, and let it run to fix any corrupt Windows files, and see if that helps.