serious slowdown or freezing

[freereg]

My intel-based iMac runs 10.4.11 and lately every 5 minutes or less, almost all activity freezes for 5 seconds before going back to normal. It doesn't freeze everything.

For example, if I'm watching flash video in safari, the video will freeze while the audio continues as well as the ability to move the cursor.

If I'm playing a game, like Battle for Wesnoth or Avernum 5, everything stops for 5-10 seconds. In Battle for Wesnoth, at least, I can still control the cursor and see it change to its 'wait' sprite.

Even now, while I'm typing this, I typed a whole sentence only to see it show up all at once a second later.

Checking Active Monitor, I didn't see any unidentifiable processes or large CPU output. I ran Disk Utility to repair permissions but it didn't do any good.

I mostly watch flash videos, play battle of wesnoth and type. Recently, however, I used AppDelete to remove a lot applications and messed around with TinkerTool without making any permanent changes.

Any ideas? I want to fix this before it gets any worse since it seems like that's what's happening.

[sourcehound]

You might try my utility, Mac HelpMate, to give your Mac a thorough cleaning - but you should also check from non-Apple launchdaemons or startupitems (/Library/LaunchDaemons or /Library/StartupItems) as well as any crontab entries that might be triggering a script every five minutes or so.

[freereg]

I don't have any launch daemons and i didn't use my admin privileges for anything but apple software updates, so i don't think it's a problem with malware...

I downloaded your software but, as far as caches go, I know OS X uses them for improving performance and deleting them could mess up my system. I don't feel comfortable using this without knowing something in my cache is responsible.

Please, anyone, I need help.