Yet another "my macbook freezes...a lot" question

I recently (less than a week) got a refurbished Macbook through the Apple store and am having a problem with constant lockups. Many of these occur when booting up, with the system simply hanging at various points before even reaching the desktop. After a certain number of attempts (usually 3 or more), the desktop will finally load and things seem to work fine...sometimes. During the initial setup, the system almost uniformly froze when I tried to configure the airport to work with my Netgear hub (that still doesn't work, so I have to use an ethernet cable, but that's for another post). Then it froze at various times when trying to access Safari or even other, non-network related apps. I verified the hard drive using Apple's system utilities, but that came up fine. I am running with all the current updates in place (Leopard (X)5.2). When things are working, they seem fine, but these almost random lockups are maddening. I'm tempted to just try re-installing Leopard and then adding the updates one at a time to see if the problem can be traced to the OS.
I've tried a lot of the solutions posted in other threads (i.e. clearing the PRAM), but without success. Is there a reliable program to test all my hardware to locate potential problems?
Thanks, everyone.

First, insert the first recovery disk that came with your computer and hold down the D key while booting. Run the Extended Apple Hardware test. Be patient -- this will likely take an hour or more.
If that comes back without errors, I would try an archive and install. (Insert the recovery disk, boot from the DVD by holding down C at startup, and reinstall OS X using "archive and install")

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  • TS3423 why macbook pro freezes a lot for me now?

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