Aspire V7-482pg Freezes

This is an extensive post.  The TL;DR is my Acer Ultrabook thinks it's a Dell. 

I bought my brand new Acer Aspire V7-482pg in March of 2015.  I know for a fact that for the last several (6?) months I have had a very specific problem.  When I try to do something that accesses the onboard disk (:C), my computer will sometimes freeze.  There is a very specific order of what happens.  We'll say, for the example's sake, I am typing in Microsoft Office Word.  So, I type and at some point my computer might (or at the rate it happens, will) freeze.  First, even though I push buttons on my keyboard, nothing appears on screen.  Then, my Windows task bar (the one at the bottom of the screen) will freeze.  I cannot click the icons on it--the icons will not even highlight!  Then my desktop freezes, similar to the taskbar.  My desktop shortcut icons will not highlight.  Then, Microsoft Word will now tell me that it is not responding (this happens at any point in the process, not only at the end).  After a minute or two, my computer will make a spooling-up noise.  I think that this is either my fans or my HDD.  Then things resume as normal, I can type and work again.  

I've investigated some things while this happens.  I have opened Windows Task Manager and find that no programs are really eating any of my resources.  The disk column glows bright red but the programs are barely reading/writing.  Even more odd, is in the performance tab.  In the hard drive section, my HDD is at 100% active time, but my read and write speeds are both at 0.  Then, when things return to normal these values change and whatnot as they normally do in normal operation.  I've included pictures of WTM in the post.

This might have gone on even longer than 6 months, but I do not know for sure.  I had been getting similar freezess then, but they were overshadowed by BSOD's that were caused by the Nvidia Physx driver (which I have sinced removed and never reinstalled), so I cannot say if that was caused by this issue, or Nvidia Physx which caused the BSOD's.  

Anyway, this freezing event can happen when using Microsoft Office (as exemplified), using a web browser, playing a game (taking an unusual amount of time to load the game, and sometimes freezing in the game), Windows Media Player, and probably more activites that I cannot recollect.  

It is not like I have wierd programs on my PC.  I uninstall the bloatware (and Nvidia Physx, leaving the GeForce driver), and put on Google drive and chrome, Avast antivirus, Microsoft Office 2015, CCleaner, Steam (currently with the games Insurgency, Mount and Blade: Warband, Company of Heroes 2, and Star Wars: Empire at War).  I've tried different antiviruses, browsers, and cloud services to see if that would remedy the issue, but none have.

I do not think this is a normal thing, that my computer is "thinking".  I used to own a crappy old Dell desktop that would pause when opening a game, but nothing else like this thing is doing.  

I've called Acer Tech support multiple times, they have had me perform system recovery upon system recovery, even taking it for repair.  Oddly, the Repair Facility in Texas stated that my hardware passed all of their diagnostic tests, so they simply reloaded a fresh OS.  Still no dice.  

Are these things normal for a laptop?  While never personally owning a laptop, I've extensively used them and never had this issue.  Is this a normal thing for Acer computers?  I don't see why it would be.  Any suggestions?  Any insights?  Any comforting pats on the shoulder?

System Specs (Might be relevant):

Windows 8.1 (Tried Windows 10, but it ran terribly because of the freezing problem)

8GB Ram

Nvidia GeForce 750m

Intel Core i5-4200u

500GB Hybrid HDD

All drivers and Windows are, AFAIK, up-to-date.  This does not iclude my Nvidia driver, it is one update behind (have had no time to update it).