Q: system keep freezing after Lion install

Hello.

I installed Lion using a genuine apple usb key drive, and the system keeps freezing and locking up so that I have to hold the power button to shut down.  I couldn't even do the updates without having to hold down power button to shut down, because of freezing.  Apple updates would not install without issues.   I spent he better part of Saturday afternoon trying to get it to work.  Nothing was working properly as far as printers, google chrome, disk utility, etc.  It seems like the install, or lion is buggy and will not work correctly. I was fortunate enough to have the foresight to back up my computer with time machine before the upgrade.  I restored back to snow leopard until I can figure out if my usb key is bad or not.  Has anyone run across one of Apple's drives that could be faulty??

I also checked for apple updates before installation of Lion, and my system was up to date, according to apple.

My system is an early 2009 MBP,  2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Do, 8 GB of ram  1067 MHz DDR3, and approximately 208 Gb free of a 320 Gb drive.

My husband wanted to update his mac mini as well, but refuses to because of the problems I had trying to run mine after installing.

Any information or ideas of what could have happened would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.