My laptop's gaming performance dramatically fell in months...

I've had my laptop for 3 years now. It doesn't have the best graphics. The best I could play is Fallout 3 on medium graphics. However, recently, all my games have started to lag and my CPU usage always seems to be 100% no matter what I do. I've cleared temporary files, cleaned my registry, de-fragged my hard disk and other things but they still lag. Games like Counterstrike 1.6 lag.. offline. Even in software mode or even if there are no other bots. DS emulators have started lagging too even the old DS games.

I had played games like DCUO, Lord of the Rings Online, Counterstrike Source with Medium Graphics. Now, I can barely play any of them at Low settings.. My internet is perfectly fine. Basically, my whole laptop's performance plummeted in a matter of months.. Is it because my laptop is getting old? Just months ago, it was perfectly fine..

Computer Specs:
Dell Inspiron n5030
Intel Pentium Dual Core t4500
Intel® 4 Series Express Chipset Family (Intel GMA 4500M HD.. not the best, I know)
4gb RAM

Any help would be kindly appreciated.

Well. Scratch that. After a brief time cleaning up my laptop and uninstalling useless junk, it seems I can play some of those games pretty well. However, games like Half-Life 2, CS 1.6, CS Source and TF2 are the ones acting out the most.. they lag even if there are barely any bots. It seems my problems are isolated to Valve games. :\

And no, I haven't tried a clean install. That's probably the last thing in my list that I would do.

danrage07 said:

And no, I haven't tried a clean install. That's probably the last thing in my list that I would do.

Personally, its the first thing I would have done. I understand this isn't a task that most people would feel comfortable doing, but its the first thing I do if my PC starts acting up.

I'll try doing the vacuum method first. If all else fails, I'd go do the clean install :P