Hi everyone, thank you for your responses:
Randall Ahren: I have tried the different viewers, creating a new character on the SL grid and the Inworldz grid to no avail. With Singularity, I get some weird graphic artifects I do not see in the official viewer and Firestorm, but the problem still remains. Also, as a side note, it seemed that Singularity actually ran slower!
Linda Brynner: Thank you for pointing out a possibility. I understand that my laptop does not have optimum specs, but how then could it run Firestorm (the latest release) fine for a few days before this issue occured? I still suspect it is a setting and not so much it is hardware, as it should then affect other games and applications as well, no?
ROB34466llla: Thanks for the info, I will try that to see if I can spot anything.