My mouse pointer freezes often but pressing esc key releases it

Lately my mouse pointer freezes very often and all apps load slower now or sometimes don't respond but if i keep pressing esc key, it gets released or solved. I have searched a lot on this, common problems of overheating, malware,disk drives failing are a few to mention. i checked the hard disk drive performance using command prompt and got a score of 6.9, ran avg scan(did not find any viruses/risks). my laptop is slightly hot near the touchpad( i have 64 bit OS, windows 8.1) and my usb mouse works a little better. i don't understand why pressing esc resolves the problem temporarily, am i overlooking some serious issue here? Also i recently installed virtualbox for Ubuntu guest that i boot from dvd which is also extremely slow. Could that be the reason? My laptop had very good performance earlier.thank you.

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