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Just a few days ago, my Windows 7 HP dv4170us (1.76Ghz CPU, 1GB Ram) laptop started to freeze every other second where everything on screen and and sound (such as a song playing in iTunes) would just freeze until I bash it violently (without actually breaking the laptop) or wait for a couple of more seconds.

I think it started one night when I noticed that a USB mouse of mine stopped working, and it displayed random "Device was not recognized" errors. I just unplugged the mouse and ignored it. Skip forward to the next day, is started freezing, and as of today I can't get my computer to not keep freezing. I tried to backup my files onto an external hdd, but it almost corrupted the drive.

I ran 4 complete virus scans using MSSE and MalwareBytes (both quick and full scans), and they all came up clean. In the Task manager, the CPU usage is on a constant max, and so is the RAM (if I have just a few apps running, I only have like 30Mb of free RAM left). Also, on the outside of my laptop, right above where the CPU is located, it's very, very hot.

I suspect that something is wrong internally within inside of the computer, but I'm not sure. It also does the same thing when booted into Ubuntu.Does anyone know what could be wrong with it?

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Do you have an SSD? It was reported that with low-grade SSD constant freezing happened when the drive has been used for some time. – liori May 16 '10 at 23:28
Nope, it has standard 100GB 2.5" HDD from HP, which is around 5-7 years old. – zenstealth May 16 '10 at 23:41
What application is causing the CPU to be maxed out? If it isn't an essential program kill it. I prefer to us Process Explorer for this but you can do it in Task Manager as well. – Zooks64 May 17 '10 at 0:19
I am only running the essentials (Firefox, iTunes, uTorrent, and Evernote). They never used up this much RAM before. – zenstealth May 17 '10 at 21:39
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