FPS suggestions

I'd like to increase my FPS (hoping to end up with at least a steady around 30?)

Laptop
Intel duo core CPU t5800 2 GHz
3 gigs of ram
32-bit vista
Intel GMA 4500 MHD

anyhow I used to run guild wars with a decent 30-40 fps during pvp. Came back to the game and i'm getting really inconsistent spikes. In the guild hall I can get 50-60FPS. Ingame, I sometimes get as low as 8FPS.

Anyhow, looking for simple/cheap ideas to increase fps.

Things I'v done

Defrag
virus/adware scans
-dx8 stuff
turned down all graphical settings
Ccleaner
game optimizer

Things i may do though are annoying or time consuming so I haven't done them yet

Reformat
Buy some compressed air to dust out the fans.
Cooling Mat maybe

Other details

My CPU and Ram usage never get used up for guild wars. I realize the video card is crappy but then again I used to be able to run this game with a much better and consistent FPS (i always run lowest setting). My goal is simply to have a decent FPS for gvg.

there isn't much you can do. you seem to have a laptop, so you cannot upgrade your graphic card.

about the only other thing you can do is reduce resolution.

what kind of temps are you hitting while in GW?

The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) is the bottle neck of your system, afraid there isn't too much you can do about it... UNLESS a rare case you have a graphics upgrade slot... but also rare, I've only seen graphics upgrades on older laptops.

Why is everyone ignoring the fact that the OP just wants to get the FPS back to where it use to be?
There are several things that can cause a system to slow down as time passes. One of the major things is up dates to secondary applications like flash and java. I disabled java auto-updater and gained 5 FPS on BOTH of my systems! Take a look at your background tasks, disable or uninstall what you can live without and DO NOT use MSCONFIG. It can and will actually slow down your system.

how would msconfig slow down a system? it's a tool to configure startup and boot sequences, and isn't running most of the time. there isn't any reason why it would slow down a system.

the slowdowns he's experiencing is likely caused by overheating, since he mentioned that his system resources are never being used up. or, he is remembering wrong, since his current performance is well within the range of an intel GMA.

like the OP i'm stuck with an intel graphics card, i upgraded to windows 7 64 bit ( i have 4 GB ram but a single core processor) and my FPS is a lot better than with vista. this is probably with more programs running with GW

My ACPI reads around 80 celcius when I run intensive games. I'm not too familiar with the ACPI or its functions. The CPU cores seem fine temperature wise. I'm thinking maybe built up dust may be causing the high temperature maybe?

and yes I realize the gfx card is the bottleneck; however, I used to get much better frames when I first got the system. I'm simply trying to recover some of it. A stable around 30 FPS is probably all I need. At the moment the stable part is in question I get really random FPS drops during pvp.

So i took apart some of it blew out the dust and its running much much better . I found amazing things like giant dustballs and cat hair inside my laptop.