10.5.8 keeps freezing especially w. Adobe CS3

My OS X 10.5.8 keeps freezing. It seems to be especially with Adobe cs3 products - but it's also been happening with firefox.

This began around 2 weeks ago and seems to be getting worse. I am not able to force quit, so each time i need to FORCE SHUTDOWN my computer! When i start up again, I have been loosing all my recent photoshop files as they've been corrupted/trunacated!

So far I have deleted all my plist preferences...no luck. Other than that, I'm not sure if I need to reinstall my whole system or has this happened to other members with better solutions?

Please help! Thanks.

 

unfortunately nothing's changed. it just began doing this a few weeks ago when (of course) i was on a serious deadline. I haven't changed anything w. my ram.