Quite happy that my weather station software is legit - it's Weather Display, is well supported by its author Brian Hamilton and has over 3500 of us using it worldwide with excellent forum activity and advice. However it is advised to "Run as Administrator" on Windows 7 as it was an XP program when first released. Spybot and Malwarebytes don't show any problems.
Re the HD light - if it's on during the freeze then it stays on permanently until I press the reset. No ticking noises apparent and I have 6gig of memory. Good idea about Task Manager - running "on top" now.