I used to be able to run games, but not anymore??

well, this is odd..

a week ago, i could run games with my laptop, not the most intensive games or anything, but at least i could run games like bully, the elder scrolls 4, and bionic commando rearmed quite smoothly

but now ive noticed i can run them, but when i play they are SLOW.AS.HELL.

also, when i open lots of tabs FFgets slow too, and it hadnt happened before either... i dont know if you guys could maybe help me telling me what could be wrong with my laptop?

my specs arent great, but theyre decent (according to the Can You Run It? site i meet the reccommended settings for oblivion, so i dont think it should run so slow at medium graphical settings)

aanyway here they are

CPU: amd turion x2 dual-core mobile rm-72

RAM: 3 gigs

Video Card: ati radeon hd3450 (256 bytes memory)

so yeah, this is quite odd =/ anyway, if you can help me, thanks! :D

EDIT: oh, also... Windows Vista Home Premium

aaand i dont really know if its 32 bit or 64 bit... but SIW said this:

Property Value
Number of CPU(s) One Physical Processor / 2 Cores / 2 Logical Processors / 64 bits

and my Vista is 32...

1) There are too many processes running along with your games

- Get to Task Manager and shut off everything that You don't need, when playing.

2) Performance/battery managers turned on

- Try to set up Your system to HIGH performance in Contol Panel, as well as in BIOS (DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING YOU DON'T KNOW THERE... There's much damage to be done.)

3) Mess in HDD/Registry

- Quite few ppl I know, really takes care of their PCs' especially softwarewise. Install Ccleaner and run some disc/registry cleaning.

4) Set your graphic card settings to full performance

- May reduce the quality of video, but fastens things up.

IF.. none of these work, I say it is time for some C:\ (System Partition) format.

When running Mass Effect 2, my cpu usage shoots to like 90-95% and the only things I have running in the background are speedfan, and Messenger(Norton too if it counts but its not really active and doing anything)
I have 2.2 ghz core 2 duo

That'd mean the CPU is reaching it's limits.. a new CPU would be a good idea.

what about the memory usage?

I would suggest backing up all your files, and then do a clean reinstall, its a pain, but theres a chance something got corrupted.

Have you checked for viruses, spyware, and other undesirables?