CPU Spike in Windows 8

[Brotuulaan]

I have a fairly new computer (last fall) with Win 8 on it. About a month ago, maybe another two weeks, the CPU started randomly jumping upwards of 95%, typically somewhere within the 90s. When it did this, all of my programs stopped responding, including windows explorer. Reboots didn't fix it, and it went on for about a week. It stopped crashing windows after that. A couple weeks go, I updated my sound and video drivers, and now it peaks around 30-40%, and it is much less often that anything crashes. It seems random, as it is not dependent on me opening a new program or using ones already open. Help?

 

[Brotuulaan]

I discovered that there was a compatibility issue between my antivirus' (AdAware by Lavasoft) security taskbar and IE10. This prevented me from attaching anything to emails in Outlook (not the one schools use, but the new Live interface). That took a lot of hours of web surfing, picking through installed software, and experimenting to figure out. I'm wondering whether the antivirus security taskbar could have had something to do with this... My OS has not crashed in a very long time, but I don't remember whether that coincides with my removal of the taskbar or not.