My laptop is now so old that it seems to be in trouble more often than not. The other day I was doing usual things what I always do on my laptop and literally suddenly it started lagging and freezing, even in the smallest things like opening the "Start" menu (takes some 8-10 second) opening folders within folders rapidly or even moving the cursor too fast. Any right click context menu takes forever. Imagine how it must be acting up while playing a video or anything heavier than "leaving it idle". It has become near impossible to do any kind of work on the laptop. I checked for recent system changes. There were none. Only update I installed in that week was for Microsoft security center and that also was 3 days before the lags started. No other program was installed in that duration. I scanned for viruses, malwares and stuff (not that I suspected I had any, but I did it any way). It's completely clean. I checked my RAM and HDD health and they are okay. I updated my BIOS. I also tried to figure out the problem by booting in safe mode and doing a clean boot, but there was no change in the problem. These kind of lags are not your usual kind where your system is requiring more power or CPU or RAM. I think this is some kind of hardware problem, most probably the heat sink not working as it should. Though I have been monitoring the CPU temperature and it stays around 38-40 C in idle and goes around 90-95 C when I'm playing GTA V. So that seems near normal. It may be a Windows problem, but I suspect it is. I don't see how that happens so suddenly. That too when there is no substantial change made of any kind to the system. I do have the option to reinstall my OS (I suspect that even that may not work). But before that I want to rule out or eliminate all other possible causes. So what might be causing the problem here?
Also for cooling, I'm using a cheap cooling pad and the distance between the laptop and the surface, it is resting on, is good 2 inches, so no problem in heat dissipation. I also opened the laptop and cleaned any dust deposited on or near the sink and the whole inside. Reapplied the paste on the CPU and the graphics card (as they both share the same heat sink). What else can i do for further cooling without spending much? Or is this entirely different problem?
My system: Dell Inspiron 15R N5110, Windows 7 Home basic 64 bit, 4 GB of RAM, Intel core i5 2450m 2.5 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce GT 525m. Dell 0HGG14 motherboard. (I don't know if that's the motherboard name, it's as "Cpu-z" tells me.)
