M17x-R3 Issue...

I'm back again.... Last year, I had issues with video card driver and BIOS when both the BIOS revision and BF3 were released.. After discussing with Chris M, we had scheduled for a hardware replacement for my GTX 460M, that didn't fix it. I was then advised to update my driver from various sources through the BETA driver released by Dell, the GTX 560M driver released by Dell, and the Verde R285 driver from NVIDIA. I found the Verde R285 to work the best for me and I had no problems with it after making that update. This was early November 2011. I had stopped playing BF3 in January because I was a graduating senior. During Spring break in late March, I decided to play again and noticed lag spikes in-game, during video streaming, and also problems with my laptop getting too hot where my video card is. I live in Maine so it was not because of the weather. I didn't have time to worry about it as I had to finish my school work to earn my degree. I decided to do a factory restore thinking it was a software problem but this not fix it. In fact, it sort of made the problem worse. 

Any advice would be of great help. I've had this baby for just barely a year and I did not expect to experience any issues especially since my first Alienware (M17-R1) still runs like a beauty. 

I am considering to ship my laptop off to get fixed and maybe get a hardware upgrade if possible but I don't really know. I'm fresh out of college and can't really spend a lot of money on anything especially since I am an international student and I need to pay for airfare to go home.

Again, any advice and help would be appreciated.

Oh I also forgot to mention that my system lags after restart. I have to shut down my computer and reboot it that way so I don't get the lag.