Sudden problem with W500

Yesterday for some reason PC games stopped working properly on my W500. A couple of games like DMC4 started lagging horribly (in that as soon as the game loaded the fps was horrible), while others simply crashed while loading.

I have no idea what happened to cause this sudden problem. I doubt it was something user-end, unless turning on the computer and going online (which I do pretty much every time I use the computer) caused the problem. My power settings are set to allow for normal gameplay as well. Just in case the problem was something system-related, I did two system restores, both of which did not work could not complete "due to an unspecified error."

Does anyone have any ideas what may have caused this problem, and how to fix it? Any help with be greatly appreciated. Thanks very much in advance!

 

Just an update. I've made sure that my computer's using the FireGL 5700 card and not the integrated graphics one, and that all the drivers are updated. However, the low FPS/game crash problem still persists. Oddly enough, other programs that may require graphics, such as movies, work fine.

Please let me know if this is not a question for the Lenovo forum, so that I can direct it to the proper one.

 

Perhaps try a reinstall of the graphics drivers - get the newest ones from the Lenovo Support and Downloads website.

 

My bad, that was the graphics driver update I was referring to in the last post. I re-installed the ATI Catalyst driver (which I'm pretty sure is the driver on my computer).