I'm not sure where to put this, so I will put it here.

I currently use a Compaq Presario R3000 Laptop that I recieved as a gift in August. It has a 3.0ghz P4 processor, 512mb Ram, 80gb HD, Windows XP Pro, and Radeon 9200 video card.

Back when I first got it, I played a couple games on it with absolutely not a single problem, Command and Conquer: Generals, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Silent Storm, etc.

Then I began my fall semester of college. I didn't have time for games or anything. I noticed in November though, that when I would be using MSPaint for a while, there would be this incredible slowdown within it. The only way I could fix this was to close it and reload MSPaint. Eventually the slowdown would occur again.

Sometimes I'd watch flash animations or play java games, this odd slowdown would occur after a while as well.

For Christmas I got World of Warcraft. I had more than the reccomended requirements. Oddly enough, the slowdown that I experienced in MSPaint and elsewhere made its way into the game as well. I went into the options and set everything at the barest of minimum and still, it would run perfectly fine for the first 2-20 seconds, then the slowdown would occur. For Christmas I also got my mom a casnio game. Yes, the casnio game experienced this slow down as well. Now that's just embarssing.

I ran my Norton Anti-virus many times, all to no avail, I ran Spy Sweeper, Spybot and Ad-aware, to no effect. This slowdown still occurs. I might have just accepted the fact that my videocard sucks if it were not for the Casnio game slowing down. Something must have happened if I was able to play games before fine and now I can't even play that.

If it makes any difference, I found with World of Warcraft that sometimes if I minimized the game and left it down there for a while, it'd run normally when I returned it, for a few seconds.

Anyone know what to do? I'd bring it into work (Best Buy), but they are rediculous and said it'd take them 5 weeks to diagnose the problem.