Opens in sections after running

Hello, I have a dell inspiron 1501 and have been having problems with it. It is always on and I partially close the cover and when I pick it up and open cover it opens in sections? and takes forever like several minutes? I have cleared everything with no luck and the longer it is running it gets to the point of having to reboot then it works fine for several hours then is goes to hell again and if you reboot it it works fine again for several hours then its almost like it locks up since you can't close anything or go any where. its driving me and my friend that is pretty sharp as far as putters go..Like I said I cleared everything and ran virus checks and nothing shows up and when you first reboot it, its fast with no problems HELP, Bill