PC Issue Need Internet Wisdom

Ok within the last few months I get pauses in cursor movement etc(lasting a second or two)usually when surfing the net. I use Chrome for the most part. Sometimes the pc will completely freeze after doing this and only option is to manually shut down or restart. Also my mouse cursor will not change to what it should like the finger, pointer or typing blinking dash. Right now it should be blinking dash inside this text box but it's not it's still the standard windows pointer.

Sometimes I get artifacts too and one time I got nvidia driver error message so GPU might be dying? Maybe just try new drivers? Sometimes I "shut down" my PC and windows seems to shut down but the actual PC remains powered. I have to manually hold the button.

I think I had this problem last summer too. Could it be the heat and humidity? Defrag? New drivers? Virus maybe? Reformat W7? What are my options here?

I must add that I swear it only happens when surfing the net. I can get in a game and play for hours with no problems. A few times though the games did seem to run chunkier but it would never freeze or anything like I mentioned above.

Could be overheating, get some OSD and see what your temps are. Could also be malware.

Hmm. It could be a GPU overheating issue, but that would carry over into games as well. What model GPU do you have? how old?

This is a long shot but have you tried opening the case and cleaning everything; take out the video card and clean the fans and stuff too. You can use a vacuum and some cotton swabs on the fans. Make sure the case has sufficient air flow and has 'room to breathe'. Always check to new drivers too. A reformat and re-install of the OS never hurts either. Cleaning my PC like that actually fixed an issue with Dragon Age: Origins stuttering way back when I had by 8800 gts. Took it out and cleaned it and it worked like a charm, for several more years I might add.

If it only happens when surfing the web, maybe your HDD has some corrupt sectors in that area. If it was fragmented the read/write times would only increase slightly since the discs would just have to spin more, so a defrag probably isn't the solution. There are also other tools you can use to diagnose these things. Have you tried a live linux distro with diagnostic tools? like UltimateBootCD or something. There are often programs that can scan for bad sectors.

Sounds like a dpc latency issue. Use latencymon and it will tell you what process is causing that.

@pyro1245: GTX 460 only 2 years old or so. I did clean it out 2 weeks ago, reset the cmos etc. I haven't checked the cpu to see if it needs new gel in years though.

Alright let me try a few of these suggestions.

Update Windows.

Check for malware, I had those issues a couple of times.

Could also be the power supply is about to die on you. Also maybe the hard drive. Do a backup.

Update windows? Like reformat or just update lol? W7 is up to date. I have MSE does this check for malware? What's a good free malware program?

What does a backup do for me? Help reveal the problem more or diminish it?

Just update it, I suggest getting a real AV like Kaspersky, NOD32, Norton or AVG.

@PredatorRules: I said my W7 is up to date. But I did find almost 5 gigs of old windows update files. Cleaned those then ran the "scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" for HDD(which took almost 3 hours) after that. Idk if it's fixed but PC is definitely running smoother.