HELP! Windows 7 Programs Always in 'Not Responding' state.

[lateforbus]

I am having problem with my 2-year old laptop recently. Last week, whilst I was watching a movie, it stopped sporadically. I thought there's just something wrong with the subtitle so I restarted the movie. Everything seemed to work fine again until the next day, every application i opened stopped sporadically. And whenever I clicked the close button it would not do so automatically. It took forever for a single file to respond. You can imagine idea how annoying that was. So I scan my computer, no virus or malware was found. Opening simple application like notepad++ took longer than 3 minutes to open, and when it finally did, my laptop would be in the 'hunging' state. I could not even shut it down properly. So made a clean installation of windows seven, hoping the problem would not exist anymore, but unfortunately it did again. I could not even finish installing a software.

I am not an expert when it comes to the hardware components of my laptop, but I definitely take good care of my unit. Please help.
Below is the system specs of my unit:

Emachine D732z
Intel Pentium P6100, 2GB DDR3 Memory, 320 GB HDD. Windows Seven Ultimate 32-bit.

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[C12Friedman]

My first response here would be to disassemble the unit (only as far as reaching the heatsink/fan) and giving it a very thorough cleaning. The most likely scenario here is that dust has built up on the heatsink and is restricting/blocking airflow. Unfortunately, once dust has built up like that, using compressed air in the vents does not remove the dust which is why I'm suggesting a thorough cleaning. I believe the model laptop in this video is similar to yours http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKGVQSxhVCg which shows what is involved in disassembly
It is not the only possibility but I believe the most likely
Hope it helps

 

[lateforbus]

Thanks. I will get back to you. have a happy new year.