Constant lag spikes when I do anything now

For seemingly months now my computer has been experiencing these random lags with the mouse cursor when I move it. I'll be browsing the net move my cursor to the end of the page and the entire computer will freeze up for maybe 2 seconds before it resumes again. Lately it has been doing it more and too often.

Is this a processor/memory issue? I run a mediocre i5 430 m 4 GB RAM but i don't have tons of programs running. Google Chrome seems to eat a MASSIVE amount of memory, when I add up all those processes for it it comes out to over 500k. That's with only like 3 tabs running and a few extensions (which don't even take up a lot of memory based on Google Chrome's task manager). Oh woops look at that it just froze again as I was typing this. Hah.

Overall memory usage obviously varies but right now i'm operating at 65% which is kind of a lot since I have a few programs running but regardless this problem occurs even at 52%. How can I go about diagnosing the problem?

Seems to be getting worse. If I move the cursor around the screen really fast it will freeze up and then resume after a few seconds. At one point it did like 4-5 times in a row. Any idea what is causing this?

Oh and it does this everywhere not just when I use an internet browser. I've monitored CPU usage in Task Manager but it doesn't seem to be spiking out of control or anything. The highest it ever gets to is like 45% when I'm doing a bunch of things but that's only for a few seconds

Try running Malware Bytes (free) and see if any malware is present.

If it's clear, download HD Tune and check for errors. <- Unless its and SSD and just leave it as it. Do not run defrags on it.

Speced said:

Try running Malware Bytes (free) and see if any malware is present.

If it's clear, download HD Tune and check for errors. <- Unless its and SSD and just leave it as it. Do not run defrags on it.

I have Norton 2011, does that not check for Malware?

500K for Chrome is very low. I have one tab of IE8 open and it's using 59,600K. You have some process running in the background, do you see any big memory hogs in Task Manager?
In start search type resmon and Enter. Look through the processes there for a clue too.

I don't see anything out of the ordinary honestly.

It found and removed 5 current threats on my computer. I guess only time will tell if those were the culprits though. My gut feeling is that they aren't.

Nope It's still doing it. I don't know what could be causing it, I restarted my computer and everything so all the memory usage was low so it's not that...

Perhaps remove Java - I found it caused too many delays and also it is one of the biggest targets for malware - that is if you can live without it, I can. Worth trying?

The problem is that it occurs everywhere (actually I don't think I notice it too much with gaming), not just when I browse the net so I don't know if disabling Java would really solve it.

This is so infuriating , I wish I could at least figure out was the cause was. If I'm listening to music it will also just freeze for 2 seconds. It's driving me nuts.