I've been playing Battle for Middle Earth, a RTS game. I'm playing in the lowest graphics mode on my laptop and its still running slow.
I have.
512 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce4 4200 : Bus AGP 4X : Memory 64MB
System processor: Mobile Intel Pentium 4 M CPU 2.40 GHz
Any reasons why this might be happening?
Well from what specs you said the computer had, they match up fine against the system requirements for the game so it probably wont low specs that are the problem.
Try scaning your computer for viruses and spyware.
Click start -> run. type chkdsk /f type Y to the question telling you it cant unmount the drive and that it will check the disk on restart. Restart your computer.
Once your computer loads to the desktop again it will of finished checking the hard drive for errors so now you can run Disk Defragmenter. Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter
After you have done all these things, run the game and let us know how it does.