Windows (Custom Dell) Video Card (ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650) Troubleshooting

[eshleboy]

For being a computer science major I know very little about hardware... I bought a custom Dell laptop for around 1300 9 months ago (new), rocking quad core processors, my 1gb ram video card (Radeon HD 4650), 6Gb of Ram. Primarily for gaming. Everything was working fine until about a month ago... now, 3d model-heavy games (SCII, HoN) run sluggishly and choppy, and online videos (ie megavideo) through firefox crash my computer at random intervals (although strangely Chrome seems to run them fine).
I'm running Windows 7 Home premium on what should be a pretty solid gaming rig... any ideas as far as troubleshooting I can try next?

Thanks In Advance,
Brandon

 

[-RockMan-]

Yes, we can help, here lets do the basics first.
Clear out IE8 or IE9 settings and cache, shut them down and do the same for chrome.
Once your done, download defraggler, then CCleaner and malware bytes free editon.
Setup ccleaner first and let it scan the whole system, once it finds any system clutter or problems tell it to clean whatever it needs to.
Now setup defraggler, and set it to come on at bootup, the reaon for that, your running a laptop, and in the meanwhile aftter you loging it can work actively in the background whern your on until you shutdown.
Next setup Malware bytes and have it scan for any problems, you never what might be stopping your system even after you ckeaned up everthing.

Finally go to ATI's site and get your official driver that you need and do a reinstall again.

 

[patonb]

Have you cleaned out your air intakes and exhausts?

 

[eshleboy]

have not cleaned out air intakes/exhausts since purchase... you think overheating could be the problem?

 

[eshleboy]

and thanks guys... am messing around with some of the suggestions now.