Windows 7: Win 7 randomly slowing for no reason it seems

I've had this laptop for about 8 months now. Kept very clean, always plugged in. First thing I did was get AVG and kept it up to date. Kept Windows up to date as well. Scan regularly, disc cleanup and defrag regularly as well.
About 1 month ago it started being significantly slower than before. Quite frustrating mainly because I can't figure out why. Hard drive is about half full, no viruses according to AVG[I haven't had a virus since I got my last computer 5 years ago to the best of my knowledge]
I don't do a whole lot, play WoW and listen to music mainly. Sometimes leave Facebook or MSN on in the background as well. Used to work great. Not sure why it's slowing down.
Anyone have an ideas as to why it may be doing this? I've tried all the basics I can think of.. Thanks!
System info in my profile if needed as well
Also - when I hit Fn key and adjust volume, sometimes it will stop showing me what it's at[little pop up on the screen] and seems like I have to press it 2 or 3 times as much to get the normal volume adjustment. Bah

There are several ways to find what the problem is. The best is to go into event viewer (type eventvwr in search). Event viewer (local) and look for errors listed in the last day, week, etc. Then go to the windows log>application tab. Finally the windows Logs>system tabs.

You want to look for all errors (they have red in the left column ).

When you find them you want to look for critical errors that say app hang, app crash, or anything that relates to the problem.

When you find them please note the event ID, and the source codes and tell us what they are.

Well. There's an awful lot going on. I hope it's okay to show a screenshot. Under apps there's about 5 or 6 pages, looks like it's almost all the same stuff as on the screenshot over and over. Pretty close by what I can see anyhow. Here is the Apps tab
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting
And here is Sys tab
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting

Thanks a lot. Looks nasty in there.

It might be easier if we sorted by date/time so we can see what sequence of event happened but you are right there are a bunch of errors.

I am assuming you dont have a backup to restore to.

Do you hve the win 7 dvd to do a repair install?

If I sort bye date/time, the most recent error on the 3rd is Service Control Manager - 7011 - None.
Next is on the 2nd; volsnap - 36 - None.

I don't have the disc, comp was bought at Wal-Mart.
I haven't used system restore in any way so I doubt there's anything of use there, but you'd know better than me

Hope that helps. I could go on with errors but they're quite a distant apart in terms of lots of in between issues so it would take a long time. Any specific errors to look for?

Without the DVD and a restore point your options are somewhat limited.

So Windows just screws up at times even if taken care of, and if you didn't want to spend the extra $100+ when buying the comp you're screwed..?

You could try running Disk Defragmenter and select analyze to see how fragmented your disk is. While your at it do some basic disk and file system checks-
at elevated command prompt run
sfc /scannow

You might as well then use Windows to do a check on the HDD
Computer > right click properties>tools>check now

When your PC is running particularly slow look at Resource monitor
type "resource monitor" in bottom left search box.
In particular look at CPU and Disk and see whats hogging resources.

Even though you say you haven't "used System Restore in any way", it might still have created a number of restore points on its own. It usually does when an installation or update is detected. So this is worth doublechecking just to make sure.

Your computer should have a hidden partition to restore it to factory conditions, but you could also ask for them to give you restore discs...this should only cost you a small fee if anything.

So after analyzing it says it's only 1% fragmented. Doesn't make sense seeing as I let the thing run all night. It does multiple passes and then finishes but never shows anything. I liked the XP defragmenter much better...
Apparently I'm not the administrator, so I can't run the sfc /scannow, which is kind of a piss off seeing as I'm the only account on here. How to I switch to admin or admin abilities?
Resetting to do the HDD check now thing