Laptop is being very slow! (in Off-topic)

Easily the best people for advice on tech help.

So my laptop recently has started being VERY laggy, usually after playing 10 minutes or so on Civilization IV. Which my laptop should be easily able to run, running it on medium setting and still the problem persists.

Before i run the game it says their may be compatability issues. Using windows 7. However when i exit the game to the main menu, my whole computer is going slow even burning BA or browsing the net, takes forever to load pages....

I have noticed my laptop get quite hot, I've defragged, ran antivirus's and registry mechanic many times. Also tried playing Dragon Age Origins and that goes at like 2FPS.

Not sure what could be the problem, my laptop is the Dell Studio 1558.

If any of you have any ideas.. feel free to post, cheers.

Few system specs: Core i5 @ 2.4GHz 4GB Ram. ATI HD Radeon 5400 series.

probably needs a good cleaning, hardware and software, if its getting really hot my guess is the fans inside are clogged, heat is a laptops worst enemy.

might want to check for some video driver updates aswell, that could help with the compatibility issue, also if thats an old game might want to change the compatibility mode for it to windows xp/vista.

I should probably download everest to see if heat is the real problem, think that shows them sort of stats.

I dunno i mean i know its not a gaming laptop, however Civilization IV or dragon age origins on low/medium settings should be easy to run, i know ive played dragon age few months back..

The laptop usually starts lagging after playing that game, so i dunno if Civs compatability issues overheats my laptop thus causing it, just a guess..

placement and airflow on a notebook computer are critical to its heat dispersion. are you sitting it on a hard surface and making sure nothing is blocking the either the air intake or exhaust areas?

definitely sounds like a heat issue, either dust/hair clogged fans, or like dude said, blocked air intake.

Its on a hard surface, fans are underneath.. Hard to not block the fans whilst on the laptop though. :/

try running a chkdsk check all the options for badsectors and stuff... normally thats my problem

How do you do that lost?

go search for chkdsk.exe