I seem to get an odd and heavy lag beginning at 12 midnight and occurs every minute or so, the lag lasts for 5-10 seconds and nearly paralyzes whatever programs i'm using. As far as I know, my PC is free or viruses, trojans, and spy/malware. Not really sure what else to check... Any help would be greatly appreciated. Nathan.

More than likely it is your anti-virus program or some other program installed on your machine that is updating itself! This does not mean that it is spyware/malware...just means that something is auto updating at that time...to find out what it is you can use a firewall like zone alarm to warn you of any program trying to access the web at any specific time. In The Matters Of Style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, Stand Like A Rock "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."

Leave task manager running on the processes screen. Sort the list by CPU and see what is highest (ignore CPU idle). If it is SVCHOST then it would be worth looking at this Si