Frame Rate

I play Counter-Strike 1.6 and i used to get a steady 30 frame rate per second. However recently, my frame rate became very volatile, jumping from 60 to 9 to 38 to 4. I tried to turn vertical sync off but to no avail. Can someone tell me how to get a steady frame rate?

Windows Xp home edition
768 ram pc2700
2.7 ghz celeron
intel extreme graphics controller 82845g

[ZbuffeR]

You know, you are on the 'coding' forum, not the gaming etc ;)

To me it seems that vsync will not help to improve the frame rate (it can only reduce to an undermultiple of monitor refresh rate). Maybe shutdown p2p clients, triple check for virus/spyware, then disable antivirus, etc.

oops, i think i clicked the wrong link by accident and posted my comment on the wrong forum. sorry :p