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Hello.
Around Christmas I began having problems in all my games, where it would slow down and start jerking every couple of minutes. I did everything I could think of, ran every virus scan and registry fix under the planet, performed a disk check, defragmented my hard drive, whatever. I don't seem to have any viruses and my event logs in "Administrative Tools" reveal nothing out of the ordinary. In all appearances, my system runs fine, but whenever I play a game, any game, it screws up. It's most noticeable in energy-intensive games such as CS:Source, Oblivion, and Half-Life 2, but even in games like Neverwinter Nights I have troubles. I have a laptop with a:
Intel Pentium M Processor 2 GHz
1 GB Ram
Nvidia Geforce Go 6600, 256 MB
Hell, I've even reinstalled the OS, and it's still there, the ubiquitous little devil. Anybody have any ideas?

Have you made sure that you are running the newest drivers for all your hardware? (GPU, chipset etc.) ?
Have you tried to turn of any anisotropic filtering or anti-alias overrides?
Have you tried turning down the quality settings in the games you're playing?

Yes, according to all indications, I seem to be running the newest drivers for everything. And I've tried downgrading all the graphics options. No good. Even games which usually require very little of my computer's capabilities, such as Jedi Outcast and stuff, still give me trouble.

Anyway, the problem started suddenly after the computer ran fine for a year, so it seems to be something recent.

I'm trying rolling back my audio driver, Realtek Semiconductors yadayadaya, because I installed new drivers for that around the same time the problem began. I think.

Anyway, I'm about ready to throw the computer out the window. Any more suggestions?

try closing off other programs before you run your game see if it help. =]

Try completely disabling audio in every way possible and run the games.
- disable audio in-game
- mute or disable audio in windows
- uninstall drivers for audio
- reinstall windows, but don't install audio drivers

I've only once had a problem with slow performance that turned out to be lousy soundcard drivers so I'm not sure if this will work.

It's probably a heat-related issue then. That's the only thing that's left.

What kind of hdd do you have and how old is it? Sounds to me like the issues you're having are related to hard disk performance which of course directly affects pagefile/virtual memory performance. Games frequently access the hdd to auto-save, load textures on the fly(some games do this i.e. HL2), load scripted events, load AI routines, etc. Heat could also very likely be an issue so getting yourself a laptop cooler of some kind would probably help your system a bit overall.

Well, one at a time.
Jesse, I've yet to try the sound card thing. So just disable the sound card? I'll give it a shot. I just updated the driver though.
It can't be a heat-related error. The temperature runs 80 tops, and GPU slowdown isn't until 105. That was my first thought, too, but no go.
I have a st9160821a 160 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive, not old at all. I got it corrupted a few months ago, but it was a software issue, that scan disk sorted out. I sincerely hope that this isn't a physical problem, because that would be a lot of trouble. Anyway, the event viewer isn't coming up with any errors, and no processes seem to be hogging the CPU or hard drive. So far, none of my very concerted efforts have paid off, damn it. Any more suggestions? I've tried every trick I know.

80C! That is way too hot! Get some cooling in there ASAP!!!