Problem appears to have been solved - Laptop defaulting to battery power saving option rather than high performance. Frame rates remaining stable if I make sure it stays on the latter.

Here's hoping thats the end of that.....

AAAAArgh!!!! I mean..... just.... argh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What the hell could be causing it to do this!? Makes no sense...

Why no anti virus just to ask? Damn, I need all the help I can get... thanks guys by the way.... really appreciate it

Formatting it might be the way to go....... Its playing up again. No idea why. I'm seriously pissed off/depressed about the whole damned thing. Argh.... so much for the early celebrations. Frames down to 15 again on Far Cry - 50 earlier this afternoon!

Any way to format without the need to reinstall all the games and patches I've spent the last 3 days shoving on here?

Ok, one of two things has just happened:

1) Yet again my computer is deciding to be temperamental and generally F around with me

2) You did it. The driver reinstall for directx seems to have worked.

Here's hoping its the latter and if so I owe you big, mere thanks would not be able to express my gratitude at that prospect!

Just turned off spybot. Defragged, emptied recycle bin, used every vista clean up tool available.Gonna go restart laptop now.Thoughts on the driver un/install?

Thanks! I just stopped a bunch of start up programs. Although with 2GB Ram and my processor, should that really affect it so much?I'm thinking of uninstalling and reinstalling the video drivers as suggested above but am unsure about that. I have an ATi mobility x1700 which apparently is totally unssupported by ATi and their driver page so would have to use Windows to check for updates and I just don't want to uninstall it and find out I can't get it back.

Really appreciate all the help so far, thanks!