Annoying Freezing

[ADKR]

About every five minutes the screen freezes. The USB mouse and touch pad
moves the pointer, but cannot close a program. I can get it to unfreeze
eventually through a CONTROL-ALT-DELETE without having to close any programs.
However that takes a couple of minutes wait time. I am not sure when this
started and would like to try something before a restore point. This is an
HP laptop with Vista Home Premium. All Windows updates installed. Not using
Firefox or other browser. Thanks for your ideas.

 

[Not Me]

It sounds like something is using the CPU at 100% during that time, once it
finishes it releases and you can work again.
Without knowing what you have installed/running, it's impossible to give you
other advice.
I would rid myself of anything from Symantec/Norton and do a complete
malware check.

 

[ADKR]

That is part of the oddity. The CPU is not taxed, nor can I see any program
using resources. Multiple scans by various products have yielded no clues.