It's like reading the last paragraph of a detective story! I'm following along with you step-by-step. You see the culprit. You go to tackle him. He escapes your first attempt. You pick yourself up off the ground and go after him again. You catch him up, and...

Someone tore out the last page!?! Were you able to keep the DX11 / Ultra-Hi Res settings, or did you have to use DX9 to actually play the game?

[EDIT] But in reality, the mystery has a much less exciting solution:

The nVidia GTX 285M is not capable of executing the DX11 instruction set.  It is a DX10 video adapter.

Since the game is DX11 capable, and Win7 is DX11 capable, you can select the option of using the DX11 Renderer and can play for a while. But when you hit any point that requires a DX11-specfic action, the game either sloooooows, freezes, or crashes completely. This can be seen by entering any area that has the transition animations.

I first discovered this behaviour with my DX10.1 card. I had everything maxed-out with DX11 and all the high graphics settings and had never seen the sign at the door swinging when you enter the Hanged Man. There was simply a static image, a very long pause, and a slow fade-to-black before being inside.  Then when I was messing about with other things and played with the Renderer set to DX9 I just about spit my tea all over the keyboard! 

Went out that day and bought the best DX11 card that my limited power supply (400W) and physical space (single-slot height) could accomodate. 

But with a laptop, you don't have the option to upgrade the GPU.

From the nVidia spec sheet:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285M

Feature Support:
NVIDIA SLI®-ready	2-way
NVIDIA PureVideo® Technology	PVHD
NVIDIA PhysX™-ready	Bitmap
NVIDIA CUDA™ Technology	Bitmap
HybridPower™ Technology	Bitmap
Microsoft DirectX	10
OpenGL	Bitmap
Bus Support	PCI-E 2.0
Certified for Windows Vista	Bitmap
NVIDIA PowerMizer	8