Computer freezes

Quick Background: I have had this computer for approximately 2 years and have had absolutely no problems until recently. In fact the computer's performance hadn't change from when I first took it out of the box. I have constantly maintained the computer and I do always go to trusted websites. About 2 weeks ago I left my computer running while I left for work. When I came home from work my computer was logged off from Windows.

The Problem: I turned on my computer and tried opening Firefox. It took an unusually long time for the program to startup. Once Firefox loaded I noticed right away the computer would freeze every few seconds, and I would get the “Not Responding” message. I exited out of Firefox and noticed it started happening with almost, if not every, program. If I am typing something, whether I'm on Microsoft Word, or on the internet, the computer freezes. It takes a few seconds for the letters to appear on the screen after I have typed them. It happens almost every time I try to scroll up or down. Some apps are worse than others. I checked the performance of my CPU and memory during these freezes and surprisingly nothing happens. My CPU maybe gets up to 30-50% max when opening a program and never spikes during freezes. I have no unnecessary programs going on in the background and my startup programs are very minimal. My computer boots up extremely fast and my virus scanner has shown nothing. I ran almost every imaginable scan possible and all say I have no viruses, malware, spyware, etc… AVG tune-up utilities sayss my computer is in perfect health. I tried every solution and gave up so I formatted my computer and upgraded my Windows 7 from home premium to professional. I updated everything from windows update and updated all my drivers. I installed Firefox and noticed the problem was still present. I tried Internet Explorer but that was worse. My computer still freezes for a few seconds and the programs still say “not responding” for a few seconds. Watching videos on YouTube is unbearable at this point. I am all out of options… I don’t know what else I can do. Sorry everyone for the long winded message, this is my first post. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Computer Info: OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Manufacturer TOSHIBA
System Model Satellite A505
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 330 @ 2.13GHz, 2133 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date INSYDE 1.40, 8/31/2010
SMBIOS Version 2.6
Windows Directory C:\windows
System Directory C:\windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name Josh-PC\Josh
Time Zone Eastern Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 3.80 GB
Available Physical Memory 1.94 GB
Total Virtual Memory 7.60 GB
Available Virtual Memory 5.59 GB
Page File Space 3.80 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
 
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