Ok... I reread your post from the beginning... Let's sort out the first thing and then move on to the second..
You wrote that your drivers were installed off the cd that came with the motherboard.. These are nearly always old and so it might be worth chasing down the new versions..
I see that your current bios should be F9 with the next version still in beta..
When you first installed 7, was it a fresh install or an upgrade?
Actually I already have F9 installed, which is why I had mentioned before that I have all the latest drivers. The other reason that I'm relatively confident of that fact is that I constantly check my manufacturer's sites for updates, just last week I installed my new ATI drivers which fixed an array of problems, and I constantly check for others, I don't like staying in the dark when it comes to my computer and hardware, which is also why this thing is such a mystery to me.
I joined just because of this, but I believe I can share some more information about this problem since I am experiencing it too.
I am using Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit on an HP Pavillion dv6976ca laptop, specs are as follows:
2.00 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5750
4 GB of DDR2 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS (256MB dedicated)
320 GB Harddrive
I've been using Windows 7 ever since May and have never experienced any major problems with it. Around the end of August I decided to reformat my computer so it would be clean for school and it worked fine for a few days. Around the beginning of September however, I began to notice some lag spikes just like the original poster. The problem has crept up and now my computer is almost unusable.
I originally suspected a virus, so I installed AVG but alas couldn't find any. I then tried to update my graphics card drivers to newer versions (tried 3 different versions in total) and that did not fix it. I then reverted the graphics card drivers to the ones I had back in May, that also did not fix it. Since I couldn't use my computer for any serious work, I reformatted my computer again 2 days ago, but the problem has returned.
I'm at the end of my wits here and I'de rather not go back to using Windows Vista since Windows 7 has been a great experience up until now. I hope this extra information may help.
Thanks.
It sucks that you're having these problems, I know mine are just aimed at certain applications, but the way you explained it, it sounds like yours is all around, which is probably really annoying.
Hopefully we can work this out soon, because I have a feeling it's getting worse as the days go by.
PS. On a side note, my OpenGL now works in After effects (I might have not mentioned it before, but it was always a problem), with the install of ATI's new drivers, which I'm really happy about.
UPDATE: I just ran a checkdisk, and it didn't find any problems up until the last stage, which was when I had to leave at about the 20% mark, when I came back windows was loaded, and I had no pop-ups or messages; so I don't think that it found any problems with disk check.
As for the memory and HDD diags, what happens if I find out that problem lies with them, though I highly doubt that it does, what course of action do I take after that? I don't have the time or the money to replace them or send them for warranty.
I'm a student and I use my computer for my programming classes often, and I can't have it gone for more than a couple days at the most.