Geforce 9400m G Problems!

i was sent here from the world of warcraft forum, i honestly have no idea what im doing so bear with me guys.. about 4+ days ago i got a virus named S.M.A.R.T. Repair. i reformatted my system to get rid of it, cause ill be the first to admit, im not very smart far as computers go. some would say im not very smart period but thats for another conversation..
so after i installed window and the various other downloads ect, i tried to play Warcraft, left 4 dead 2, anything i normally play and the graphics SUCKED. i mean i lagged so bad it was simply unplayable.. WARCRAFT for christ sake! this alienware comp cost me 3k when i bought it back in jan of 2010 i believe it was..

so someone told me it was most likely my graphics driver giving me problems.. well im here to tell you ive downloaded EVERY DRIVER geforce.com has on it.. ive reformatted no less then 10 times in the last 4 days, im at my wits end here.. my eyes throb from reading so many forums/threads/anything.. i even hacked into one of the drivers trying to get it to work (you know, the cool guy on youtube, that video...) my screen turned black for about 20 minutes till i finally hit the power button, which crashed my comp.. had to install windows AGAIN

im honestly starting to feel like im not smart enough for a windows machine at this point. if anyone wants my dxdiag ill be more then happy to post it, im running windows vista 64 btw.. ANY help would be great...

 

Hello and welcome to NBR.
Let me start by telling you that you came to the right place.

You are most likely experiencing shutdowns due to high temperatures of the integrated graphics processor (9400M).
This can be solved by simply replacing the thermal pad between its die and the heatsink. It should measure ~10mm x 10mm and 1mm thick.

A temporary fix would be to turn off the 9400M in BIOS:
- power on your system and press the F2 key repeatedly to access BIOS menu.
- with your arrow keys navigate to Advanced and down to Graphic Settings
- Here, set all four options to Disabled.
- Press the F10 key to save and exit.

Let windows start and start a temperature monitoring program like HwInfo, CPUID HwMonitor etc., start playing a game for a while then ALT+Tab and write down your maximum temperatures for everything. Post them here and we'll continue from there.

Also, have you or someone else ever opened your system to clean it? Heatsinks can get clogged with dust and prevent components from cooling themselves down.