Those appear to be legitimate processes. The only listing i can find for acwinservice.exe is at CastleCops, but their site is under construction, so no details. Of the other two, one has to do with wireless connections, the other is a hard drive protection utility. Do you have any reason to suspect a hardware problem?
Before you do anything else, I'd do this: Start -> Run. Type in the following: "sfc /scannow" without the quotes and a space before the slash. Just to be sure there's no corrupted system files. Before looking at hardware, take the software angle. You mention a couple things recently installed. Adobe reader is buggy and bloated, suggest you uninstall it and replace it with this free reader:
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
Haven't used Adobe in years, but as I recall, I had software conflicts and crashes with it. [shrugs] See if ditching it helps. You could also try a system restore if so inclined.
I dunno about matrix laboratory, I doubt it would cause trouble in bootup, but maybe someone else knows?
Good luck.