After I restarted my laptop last night, it cannot scroll up and down smoothly (whether in firefox, outlook, or within my own folders). It's a bit difficult to describe, but when I scroll, a small horizontal chuck of the screen will change accordingly, followed immediately by the chunk beneath it, cascading all the way down my monitor until a scroll "jump" of a certain size is completed. Obviously, this is incredibly obnoxious. I've done a full virus/spyware scan, reinstalled the video card drivers, tried to load up a system restore point from a few days ago, and restarted many times, but nothing changes. Any other tips?

Is this with the laptop touchpad scrolling or USB mouse scrolling problem?

Both

How is the laptop? With my old Dell laptop, the touchpad has become erratic to the point that touching it can send the mouse all different directions, even overriding a USB's mouse commands.

How old, do you mean? I bought it in August 2005, and it's held up pretty well. I've never had a problem with the touchpad (which I rarely use) or mouse scrolling.

Make sure smooth scrolling is turned off just for kicks.

Also, run dxdiag, go to the Video tab, and make sure you have all 3 acceleration things enabled. If they're disabled or not available there's probably a problem with your video card drivers or motherboard drivers.

I was thinking video issues as well

I thought it said erotic scrolling.