Game suddenly constantly freezes

[Dabima]

I have been playing on a new laptop for a few weeks now, with no problems whatsoever. The laptop runs the game on DX 11 on ultra high settings seamlessly, but today, upon logging in and hopping in a quest, whenever I get within the vicinity of a monster, my game freezes for 10-20 seconds, every 30 secs or so until it dies or I move away. I pulled up the task manager, and the game's memory was sitting at about 1.6million K. I'm pretty sure it usually sits around 900-1m. I have heard it will skyrocket if you change characters several times without relogging, but it was my first time on today, and I had been on one character for about 20 minutes or so. I force closed the game, and tried reloading it again. After logging in, the game window comes up, but its just a black screen, and the computer completely freezes up several times for 30 seconds or so. After several minutes of loading (usually takes only about a minute), the character screen will come up and I can log in, but the memory usage immediately starts skyrocketing and providing the same symptoms. I have tried changing to DX9 or 10, and have tried lowering graphics down to high or even medium, but the problems persist. Any help would be appreciated

[Dabima]

No, I have not downloaded any new programs, ran any new updates, or anything of the sort since I last played