Dragging Things over Desktop Makes My Whole System Lag

This is a recent problem, so I'm not sure what caused it. Dragging things that are already on the Desktop works fine, but if I open another window in Explorer and try to drag something from it to the Desktop, it lags a lot. My mouse will take multiple seconds to move at all. This does go away after I've stopped dragging the file, but this is extremely annoying--and I'm having other problems as well, and I think that fixing this might be a start, so I'd really like some help diagnosing this.

Hello and welcome to the sevens forum.

1. Download the free version of malwarebytes and run a full scan as I see your spec's say you have no antivirus.
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free

2. Download the free version of superantispyware.
SUPERAntiSpyware | Remove Malware | Remove Spyware - AntiMalware, AntiSpyware, AntiAdware!

We need to make sure you have no viruses or malware on your system...
How long have you had your laptop...
Do you know when this started and what you were doing at the time...
Have you tried safe mode to see if it does it there also...
Have you downloaded any new software lately...
How old is your battery...
Have you tried to do a point restore going back before the problem if not you might want to try it to see if it fix's it...

Please let us know if you have done any of the suggestion above...

Hello, thanks for the response.

After running the two programs you mentioned, I did indeed find a couple of unwanted malware (the main culprit seemed to be a few BitCoin miners). For now, the problem seems to have gone away, but there have been times when I thought this, but it came back later. I'll answer some of your questions:

I actually only got this laptop a little over a week ago, and this problem started (I think) within the last two days.
I haven't tried Safe Mode yet (though I did try a clean boot to no avail).
I assume the battery is only as old as the laptop, i.e. quite new.
I've downloaded plenty of software recently, so it's hard to tell which one could be a problem.
I haven't tried going back to a restore point because I always have system restore turned off.

You don't have to reply if there's nothing else, but is there any other thing I should check that could have caused this? I know it seems to be fixed now, but I just want to be safe. Thanks for the help.

Test your RAM and HD, establish a Clean Boot, run SFC, work through the other Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7