Check post 12 with the specs.

I understand your concern. I agree that opening a laptop for the first time is not a thing I would recommend to do alone, AND (I should have mentionned it earlier) don't forget opening your laptop may void warranties (seals and all ..)

It is odd, only games seem to be lagging right now, the PC itself is running fine without major lag. I get occasional delays when running certain websites on Opera but it is not an issue as far as I am aware.
It also doesn't help that it is my current machine at the moment and the only other machine I have is an old HP machine from 2001.

What kind of HDD do you have?

Each manufacturer provides a diagnostic tool to check the disk for potential issues.

You may want to also run a chkdsk operation. Open "My Computer", right click on the drive, select Properties, then"Tools", and under "Error-checking" choose "Check now". Only check the first box for now ("Automatically fix file system errors"). You'll have to reboot your PC, and the chkdsk will run upon startup. It may take awhile (up to an hour if there are bad sectors).

After you log back into windows, you can find the log file to see if there were any errors. Details on how to do that here:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/96938-check-disk-chkdsk-read-event-viewer-log.html

I have a TOSHIBA MK5056GSY (SATA) drive and I did the chkdsk thing, found no issues at all.

I tried the solution that Sachys gave and after trying it with the game that is suffering the most from this issue, Blood in DOSBox, it didn't work at all. The game worked fine before this issue with the occasional hiccup which I am assume is normal for the game on my machine since it is not top of the line.

I can't test them right now, but are hey 16 bit? If you use Windows 7 64Bit that would make sense... not sure how you'd circumvent it though...

Referring to the games I am assuming? If so, they were running fine before until this issue cropped up a couple of days ago. They are the only things that are lagging terribly, browsing the Internet and doing just non gaming stuff on my PC doesn't present any issues. Most of my games are 32 bit, including DOSBox games if that is 32 bit. The only games that may be 16 bit would be Sacrifice, Unreal Tournament, System Shock 2, Unreal, and GTA 2.

You wouln't have a spare hard drive by any chance ? Swapping Hard drive and quick installing an OS and a game is the best way to know if you have 'software / hard drive issue' or 'Hardware issue'

On post 20 you are basically saying that your issue is getting worse ? Make/Update backups.

Sadly I do not, the only way I can confirm if it is a hardware issue is to do a complete system restore and see if the issue occurs on a new install of Windows.

Hmm, I'm not sure. An HDD diagnostic might give insight if it is a hard drive issue, but it doesn't seem like it. Anyway, here is one that can be used on most drives:

http://www.hgst.com/support/downloads/#WINDFT

Last summer I had a similar issue on my laptop where the CPU was randomly being stressed. I had all these random svchost processes popping up. I think this occurred after a Windows Update, but after a day or two it just went away.

edit - nevermind, you said you tried System Restore, so it probably isn't an update issue.

Looking at the resource manager, I have 12 svchost.exe processes running, my guess is that it is not normal.

I might just end up doing a system restore myself because I have a sneaking suspicion that this is a result of installing a Yamaha soft synthesizer that could have possibly mucked up my Windows installation somehow. It seemed like it was acting up after doing that..

Hmm, yea that could be it. Windows is weird. Sometimes installing or updating something just causes these odd behaviors.

Hope system restore fixes it! Did you try uninstalling the synthesizer program before doing a restore?

You probably found the issue, but you might try doing a system restore back to a point a day or two before you installed the synthesizer program. It might be that it was a combination of things.

As I was reading through the thread and before I found the part about the synthesizer, Windows updates were my main suspect. Second bet was either a new version of Flash player or a graphics card update having been installed recently. All of those have caused issues similar to what you're describing for me in the past. You might want to check Programs and Features and see what updates were installed recently and try uninstalling them.