Dell xps M1210 cpu overload problems

Hello everyone,
First Id like to say that I am new to this site and this is a first post so thank you for any help in advance.
I have a Dell xps m1210
Specs: XPS M1210. - Core Duo 2.0Ghz w/AV Package. 2GB Transcend Jetram DDR2-667, Hitachi SATA 80GB 7200rpm, 256MB Geforce Go 7400, NEC 6650 8xDVD+-R/RW, Dell Wireless 1500 Draft-N, Bluetooth 350.

Generally speaking the laptop performs well with any task I use it for such as web surfing or writing papers or watching video and listening to music, but these can sometimes randomly lock up due to 100% cpu usage, mainly coming from the 'system' process. While this is very occasional and rare my large problem comes when gaming, specifically on World of Warcraft.

While playing at any point, whether just logging on or being on experiencing no problems for 20-30 mins the game will lag or totally lock up due to the system process hogging all the cpu. At times it will run at 20+ in the background which seems strange but not necessarily problematic. However while locking up it spikes and stays at 60+ often at 70-80% with only 264k memory usage...

So my question is what exactly is wrong and how do I fix it (obvious I know). I have reformatted a time or 2 with no better luck. Also calling Dell to run diagnostics over the phone helped about as much as yelling at the computer itself. I have seen that there are cooling issues that may cause problems, but I dont see this as the most likely reason. It may be video drivers or some other minor setting that Im totally screwing up? I read that with cpu 100% usage its likely to be broken ram? Ive run some anti virus and haven't had anything register yet, but another possibility I assume?

Any and all help is greatly appreciated so I can see the performance that I paid for come out of this laptop.
Thanks again.
-Keith

Keeping it cool definitely helps, but even with a cooling stand and on a desk it still locks up from time to time.

Yea I came across the same problem looking for answers to why the cpu would lock up at 100% so Im glad to be able to help out. I ended up getting a different laptop stand that has 2 fans blowing up into the bottom of the machine significantly reducing the temperature. It ran me about $26 but is well worth the investment because everything operates much smoother and can play online games for hours with no cpu overloading issues. It sounds like we had identical problems so a cooling stand should definitely do the trick. Best of luck.
-Keith