Laptop with hiccups?

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Acer travelamate 242LC XP home SP2 all driver up to date.

After using my laptop for a while (about an hr) it develops what I can best describe as hiccups?! Every 3 or 4 seconds the entire system (software only) freezer for a split second then contiunes. No matter what I am doing, video playback pauses, music pauses, loading web pages pause, the mouse icon stops etc.. all together for just a split second then off it goes again. It's almost as if the system clock skips a few beats then starts again. Hardware appears unaffected, fans continue, hardrive I think still spins, the monitor stays on, all leds continue to glow. I am leaning toward overheating as the cause, the RAM is new and tested ok, any other thoughts?

It's out of warranty.

 

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anything of note in the event logs? what about virtual memory setting, is there plenty of disk space left?

 

Have you checked performance tab in the task manager, that should tell ya whats under load

 

Is this whilst running on batteries? :Laptops can do bizarre things whilst running low on batteries.

have you done a general house clean? Spyware and virus check?

 

This is common on Acers.

Overheating or batteries need replacing.

Be very careful about blowing compressed air through it though...I have seen where this will fritz the internals, especially if the compressed air is cold and there is residual heat in the laptop.

 

Yeah, definitely look to see if anything's consuming resources on Task Manager when the hiccup happens. Hope it's that and not something hardware related.