Computer freezing during internet and sometimes randomly

Starting last night, my laptop has been freezing within 10 secconds of getting on the internet and sometimes just randomly. It will start acting slow, windows explorer not responding, then everything freezes, even the mouse. I have run avg free and nothing came up, so now I am downloading a program to get rid of a notorious hijack and a reg cleaner.
If this doesn't work, then I may have to re-install windows (grrr) so any help would be appreciated. And I dont have an Nvidia card, so it isn't that bug.

Btw, typing from an ancient computer that shuts down randomly because the idiot who assembled it (custom) didn't connect the fan and overclocked it mad high, burning up the processor and crap when I tried to play crisis... but that is another story.

Uninstall Adobe Flash.

Thanks. Doing it now. But do you mean player or the actuall flash. Supposing that I had aquired other adobe program in the same way, must I do the same for them? I am uninstalling both flash Programs now.

Update
Nope. Still doing it. I think I am just going to purge my pc of all adobe files and change back my hosts file to normal. Maybe that has something to do with it.

In my experience, sometimes when I start up Firefox, everything would completely lock up. Usually I'd find crazy ways to get out of it, like launching CMD through Steam and executing a kill command through that. I always assumed it was Flash for some reason. Your problem sounds a little different though, since you're getting it all the time.

Maybe you should stop using Internet Explorer?

Ok, I think I am going to just reinstall windows. I think it is a sofware problem so a wipe and clean install should take care of that. I already have everything important backed up so i am not losing any data. Thanks for the help anyway.

Edit: also, I uninstalled ie a long time ago. I only use firefox and chrome.

fixed. uninstalled chrome and it is good now... of course I do this after wiping my D drive with all my games on it.