cpu usage pokertracker and other stuff

[Acemanhattan]

So i dont have any sort of technical background in computers, and am clueless to what any of this means. I have a HP laptop thats about 2 years old now, and it really has a mind of its own. What confuses me is the inconsistancy in its operating speed. Sometimes i can have three internet windows open 5 tables PAhud and Ptracker working all together and it runs like a champ, then other times out of nowhere, it decides that poker tracker is just going to freeze for 20 minutes, or internet pages are going to not pop up. WHats the deal here? My cpu usage in windows task manager (i dont even know if this indicates anything) will go from 3% to 100% when I try to access something in pokertracker and it decides to freeze up. So what can i do, any advice to speed things up? Please laymans terms for everything!! I also can tell you i have like 40 "processes" running at once, will that mean anything? I just dont get why one minute it will be a peach and the next minute it wont run!!! HELP!!