Did you try Latency Mon http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon
 
It give a much more detailed report. 
But I think what Alex is saying might be true, More Memory and up the Buffers. 
To use real time effects at low buffer settings you'll need a lot more CPU power I would think. 

Oh,  disable the wireless LAN card.
You can do it from Network connections. Just right click on the wireless icon and disable.
I don't think I have seen this mentioned.
 

I have also run into what seemed to be random pops/clicks. But it turned out to be the amp sim.
If I had several clips in the track, each time a new clip started the amp sim would pop.
My clips were sliced at the zero crossing and would not pop if the sim was disabled.
I remember a thread about this a couple of years ago, but can't remember the details.
Are your pops truly random?
 

I have addressed everything you have mentioned.
 
The only additions are:
 
Disable PCI power management.
 
I have not addressed the battery management..still waiting on education for that.
 
I will have to test further, as initial testing tonight revealed one pop only, and that was when I first initially started task manager.
 
My CPU is running no higher than 47%.

Sorry, I repeated some things you have already done...I was on a mobile so it was hard to navigate.
I disabled some services while trying to solve the same issue on a toshiba laptop.
Try stopping and disabling the following services in services.msc.
-superfetch
-application experience
-windows search
These do not affect the normal usage... web,networking, etc. killing superfetch helped me a lot.
I am thinking disk access here since you had a pop while opening a program but the CPU spikes then as well.
I also set a bunch of services to 'manual' but the list is too extensive to list here .
Have a look at blackviper.com for your OS for some more suggestions about which services you can safely kill.
If you have the ability to switch the firewire driver to legacy mode, try that. just google "firewire legacy driver".
This is a must on my Tascam firewire interface and many others.
Just as a check, make sure your HDD controller is set to DMA mode. google " setting HDD DMA mode".
I am running dry here, and if none of this works, I starting to think maybe you can't get there from here.

O.K. so as far as I can tell it is random.
 
Although it sounds like the exact type of pop...sometimes it is louder than others.
 
I recorded four bars of a guitar track and then recorded over it with another and a very loud pop occurred and I was sure that it dropped out, but it did not. When I played it back, the track was uninterrupted.
 
I am lost.
 
Maybe a new PC, as this laptop is maxed on ram and it falls short on CPU power.
 
 

I have a core2-duo E8400 @ 3Mhz which handles 30-40 tracks and a bunch of synths. Yes your PC is underpowered (like mine) but usually with laptops it is more the architecture and chipset. 
They are trying to balance the power consumption vs performance. WIth some laptops you can reduce all the overhead to the point where it is usuable for audio. I would try the things I suggested in my last post before giving up. Especially superfetch and the firewire legacy thing. As a last resort you could split your guitar input to an amp for tracking and increase your buffers/ latency and see if that worked. I have outboard effects  so I can get a decent sound for monitoring while tracking using this technique. 

Set buffer to 512. Buy a USB audio interface.

If you run Latency Mon and leave it running, it will take all this guesswork out of your troubleshooting. It will tell you where the issue is. Laptops can have things that cannot be shut off, these are part of the BIOS. 
I have messed with a few laptops and the two biggest DPCLAT issues are caused by Wireless and Battery management. 
Shutting off start up service will do very little other than make your computer boot faster. 
If the pops are only being heard, and not recorded, don't worry about it. It's a laptop. Laptops are for mobile recording and not a first choice for a DAW platform. 
 

gswitz
Disable battery helped me on one.

Have you tried the opposite of this, running on just the battery, in case it's picking up something from the main. I have a small travel laptop, from acer, and since coming to Asia, and I mean the very night I arrived (may be connected to some sparks I saw the first time I plugged in at my hotel) I started getting this issue running itunes or youtube. My friend has a laptop from the same range, and is fine, so I tried his PSU, but still I had the problem. I'm also suspecting some ram damage, but it's noticibly better after unplugging