I used to like to use a command at the command prompt....so that you could Freeze all the layers except that one the active layer. Seems like it was "Layer", "F" and then "*". It was very handy.
Can't seem to do this with the dialog box.
Try putting a hyphen in front of the typed command "-layer" will run the command in the command line, with F for Freeze as one of the options. From your description though, what you really want is the Isolate Layer command (layiso) which turns off all the layers except the one(s) you pick.