Frame rate repetitiously drops then raises

[Neonpremesis]

I've encountered an issue with FEAR 2 just recently. When playing the game, it starts out fine, but after a couple of minute the game will just drop drastically in frame rate. It does this for a few seconds, the goes back to normal for a few moments, then it drops again. It continues to repeat in this fashion. It makes the game unplayable in some parts and just annoying for the rest of it.

It has been a number of months since I last played FEAR 2 and just a couple days ago I decided I would get purchase Reborn. I reinstalled the game with Reborn already purchased. I started the game, in the corner of the screen it said it was version 1.05, and checked all of the settings, they were all still just as I had set them months ago. I then began the browse through the level select screen and see about half of the levels no longer say I have the items collected. That's fine with me, it wouldn't be hard to get them back or anything. I decide to load my last saved checkpoint and sure enough, I'm missing about half of the injections you can find. Again, it didn't bother me.

I thought I'd keep playing from that point and refresh myself on the game a little before I started playing Reborn. However, after a couple minutes of play, the frame rate problem started. I quit the game and started it again and the same problem still occured. My computer was able to run FEAR 2 nearly flawlessly on nearly all Maximum settings when I'd purchased the game almost a year ago and continuously replayed it up until several months ago. I ran several complete system-scans from several different anti-virus software, one after the other, each scan coming up clean, and rebooted the computer when that was done. I started the game again and the problem still occurred.

I ran a disk defrag and made sure my drivers were all up to date after that. Then I tried lowering the settings, even though I never had to do so before and still the problem remained unchanged.

So, I decided to visit this place once again to see if I could find a solution. I browsed the Technical Problems board as well as used the Search function. Closest thing I was able to find was this: http://www.projectorigincommunity.co...highlight=drop but it didn't help me.

I don't use Xfire, nor have I tried playing the game online since reinstalling it. This whole experience has been solely in the SP campaigns.

Any ideas or suggestions as to how to fix this?

Thanks.

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 2.66GHz (2 CPUs)
Windows XP Home Edition w/ Service Pack 3

[Kjølen]

Install Spybot Search and Destroy, update it, and run a scan and clear any possible spyware programs. Install Eusing Free Registry Cleaner and fix any broken registry entries. make sure your power supply is supplying enough juice over the +12A rail. Reinstall your game, if you have to.

[Neonpremesis]

I fixed the problem. A friend suggested I be sure to get the dust out of the inside of my computer. Nearly slapped myself for not thinking of that sooner. Once that was taken care of, the game began running properly.

Thanks for the help anyway.