Temporary PC lock up during live update?

I've got an ongoing temporary lock up issue with my PC where whatever I am working on goes "non responding", I then try and bring up task manager but it does not come up, and pretty much anything else I try and do is frozen out.  This remains the case for a minute to a couple of minutes, then poof, it comes back (task manager runs, other programs start responding again, etc.).  I am beginning to get suspicious of live update.  If after a lock up, I take a look at live update, it shows that it just completed seconds before.    I've turned automatic live update off to see if the issue goes away, however, in the meantime, I wanted to check if others had seen this type of thing.  Running NIS 2011 version 18.6.0.29.  Vista Ultimate 64 bit, SP2.  Any help would be appreciated.