[M. Bison]

Your laptop may be overheating which is forcing the CPU and GPU to downclock in order to avoid damage. If you weren't having overheating problems in the past, then you may have a build up of dust in the laptops fan. Contrary to the laptops name, it'd be greatly advised not to actually have it on your lap since most laptops have air holes near the bottom and doing so would degrade air circulation, increasing heat/dust buildup and exacerbating the gradual damage to internal components. Additionally, most laptop components including the CPU and its thermal pad/thermal paste will degrade under normal use and overtime become more prone to overheating issues.

I would suggest installing HWiNFO32/64 and checking the sensors to see whether you do have an overheating problem. An intel CPU will begin throttling at ~90ºC and abruptly power off at ~100ºC. I don't recall when most GPUs begin their throttling, but it steeply does so at ~95-100ºC and will abruptly power off when it hits 105ºC.

If you're not having overheating issues then you're hitting some sort of a bottleneck and it could be any number of system components. A lot of background services and/or programs could bog down and hog CPU/GPU processing time causing a complete system slow down. I would suggest terminating unnecessary programs and services which are actively running. Additionally, I've noticed Windows 7 seems to randomly get system file corruptions which cripple the system and make use of the OS near impossible. If you do encounter such a problem consistently, then it may be an indication that your laptops hard drive is failing and needs to be replaced. A reformat followed by a fresh install of your OS will generally restore performance assuming your hard drive isn't at fault.