Windows7 Freezing/Not Responding

I have a Gateway laptop. Had it since christmas 2010. It came with Windows7 on it. it has 4gb ram and a AMD Turion processor.
Its been giving me some trouble for a while now. I'm an online student and rely on this laptop for almost absolutely everything to do with getting my homework done. and it constantly freezes
I'll click somoething, then ill click it again thinking i didn't tap the mouse pad section hard enough then the page goes white, as if im looking at the monitor through wax paper and the title bar says "(not responding)" i can minimize the page and thats it. sometimes when i minimize it it starts working normal again othe times it will take a really long time before it starts working properly again.when it takes forever and i manage toget the page minimized i'll notice that other programs arent responding as well. its as if the entire operating system has stopped working. i use aim and yahoo mesenger, and when i receive an instant message on either of the two it freezes. i cant type when the other person is typing because it freezes
ill be in the middle of doing my homework [typing a paper, since most of my homework relies on microsoft word 2007] and when im in the middle of typing out a sentence it will freeze. it does it at the most random moments. it's a new laptop, this operating system came with it. i have kasperksy for my anti virus and i use the windows firewall, i run ccleaner regularly and i also have malwarebytes and superanti spyware that i run from time to time as well. there isnt a whole lot that i do on here. i dont normally have a thousand things running at once. my registry's been cleaned, my start up list is as minimal as possible. i turned off services that dont need to be running, im on top of my windows updates, i dont have any viruses.
why would it be doing this so much?

 

Greetings, xdcx.

Do you get the same symptoms when you boot into Safe Mode? If not, try running msconfig and disabling all startup items, then selectively enabling to find the culprit(s).

 

I'm still somewhat new to windows7 in comarison to my old OS which was XP
i dont have "run" as an option in my start up menu to be able to access the msconfig from there. and i dont know how to start it in safe mode either.

 

Hello,
Click the Windows start icon and in the "search programs and files" box type msconfig. Then right click and select "run as administrator".

 

And, to start in Safe Mode, reboot, and as the machine starts up, tap <F8> before Windows starts.

(Apologize for the confusion - thx, tgell).

 

thank you guys. and yes it does it in safe mode as well.
i have next to nothing in my start up list in both msconfig and in ccleaner

 

Among a zillion possibilities it could just be a memory issue. Try MemTest

 

i've been running that suggested memtest and its up to 90.0% with 0 errors. what else could possibly be causing this problem?

 

If the Memtest verifies RAM integrity, then you're probably facing two avenues: other hardware or Windows (since the Safe Mode test pretty much rules out 3rd-party software).

1. Hardware...You might check your hard drive's OEM, run any diagnostics tools they offer and see if this is a disk failure problem. In the same vein, check temperatures of any components you can.

For that matter, you might consider burning and booting to a live Linux distro, which might give a clue as to whether this is a hardware problem or not.

2. Windows...Do you have a Windows 7 disk or Gateway recovery disks? If so, you might consider backing up any important data and preparing to run repair and/or re-installation routines.

And, of course, if you in any way suspect malware as the cause, then I'd suggest you run through the Malware Forum's Read & Run Me First thread, perform all of the suggested steps, and attach the requested logs to a new thread in that forum, just to make sure.