Specs:

Sager 9860-S
3.6Ghz P4 HT
6800 GDDR3 256
60 gig sata drives
17" WSXGA Widescreen, glossy
TV Tuner
1 Gig of RAM

I generally do not play games on my sager but use it as a desktop replacement in my office. I have an ultra thin notebook for my daily portability needs since it's easy to carry, and I have a HTPC (Home Theater PC) which is a desktop I custom built for all my gaming and movie needs which is connected to my TV and soon to a Plasma TV.

Well last time I played Half Life 2 on this machine, it ran great. It was smooth and silky. That was like 4 months ago. I haven't changed anything on this machine to make it run bad, but now suddenly it runs slow as hell. The game is extremely choppy...like EXTREMELY choppy. As if I wsa running this on a GeForce 2 card with all the details up.

I have NO spyware or viruses on this machine, as I scan on a regular basis with the newest definitions.

If no workable solutions can be proposed, I am going to reformat this machine. The sager manual mentioned something about drivers being installed in the "proper" order.

I've done this many times with my desktop, but never a laptop. What is the proper installation order in case I have to reformat?

Other than my gaming issues, this Sager seems to run really well.

It should be in your manual....My 9880 manual was impressively done and explained how to do it with lttle gotcha's to look out for too.

Here's the 9880 manual (Clevo D900T)
http://www.clevo.com.tw/download/USR...0T&menual=+GO+

I believe it's very much like your 9860. Following the order of driver installation wouldn't be different anyway.

Basically: Format, Install WinXP, Install SATA drivers (if you have SATA drive), install WinXP SP2(uninstall USB driver & reboot to get 2.0 drivers installed), Install device drivers in following order:
Chipset, Audio, Modem, Network,Video, AP-Key, Touchpad, Wireless, BlueTooth, TV-Tuner, Camera.

BIG SAFETY TIP: disable your card-readers in BIOS before installing WinXP otherwise you'll have all kinds of drive letters assigned and OS may not get C:

did you ever check on temp of your lappy? i had the same prob a short while ago, was caused by "clogged up" cooling. kinda sounds about right to me with the ...4 month later... part. open it up and clean heatsinks for cpu and gpu (mine where filthy) what lead to overheating i asume and a slowdown overall whats system protection. worst case scenario it will just shut you down suddenly as a overheating protection. might be something else, but worked for me. i actually have to do that sh*t every couple month due to extreme dusty conditions. the fans at the bottom don't help there either but make it worse. keep the surfaces clean where you place your lappy, it extends the cleaning intervals. hope that helps, let me know!