Laptop questions (games and video capture)

Greetings to all. First off, this is my first time posting in the forums, despite searching around the site for helpful stuff. I'm posting about a couple of issues I've run across with my laptop. Specs are as follows:

Sony VAIO PCG-GRZ series (bought new last year)
2.49 GHz
512 MB RAM
Pentium 4
40 GB HDD
WinXP SP2

1. I've installed a couple of games on my laptop, but I've noticed that the games' framerates (FPS) tend to take a nosedive every now and then. By checking out the status of the games' FPS I can see that they initially start out at the normal 60 or higher FPS, but then plummet to around 20-30...but then about 60-90 secs. later, they go back up to 60 or higher. The FPS droppage of course cause the games to become a little choppy and not as smooth. The odd thing is, that out of curiosity, I installed the games on my work computer which are Dells that are at least 2-3 yrs. old, and the games work perfectly with high FPS, smoothly and all. These Dells are definitely not as powerful as my computer, with much less HDD space, Pentium III's, and the processor power is lower, yet the games work virtually flawlessly. I found the Game Accelerator software on this site and installed it to see if that would help. Surprisingly enough, on Thursday the games worked perfectly - completely smooth, high FPS, etc. But then, just on Friday and Saturday, it resorted back to the way it was before installing Game Accelerator, even with different configurations. I've already scanned for viruses, spyware and adware, and earlier last week, I backed up everything and did a system restore, only reinstalling the software that I wanted to retain, but the games still behaved this way. It's almost to the point where I wanna shell out for a Dell OptiPlex for CPU portability. :rollseyes:

2. My 2nd question is dealing with my Dazzle VC 8 and CorelDRAW. I don't know if it's a software or hardware related issue, because it works one way, but another it doesn't. Before reformatting my laptop, I was able to use the Dazzle capture device to capture images/video from my Playstation2, TV, VCR, etc. using CorelDRAW. However, upon reinstalling Corel, I've noticed that when capturing an image, the resulting window is just a black screen instead of the image I wanted to get. I've tested this with MGI Videowave, and it works every time I try to capture an image. So, I installed MGI Photosuite thinking it may just will work with MGI software, but with Photosuite, again the resulting capture was a black screen window. Out of about 20 consecutive tries in Corel or Photosuite, a total of 3 correct images were captured, where if using Videowave it works with no problems. The only difference between these 3 is that with Videowave, you can capture without it bringing up another window, but with the other 2, it brings up another window indicating the capture device you have, and a button saying "Capture Still Image." Anyone familiar with this?...is it some kind of hardware configuration I'm missing? Thanks in advance for any help you all may have. ^_^

 

As for the Gaming problem, It sounds to me like your HDD needs a Defrag. I assume you've already tried this, but that's what instantly comes to mind.

 

I just did a thorough defrag with Diskeeper 7.0, however it still seems the games get a lil' choppy with the occasional low FPS. Is there another suggestion, or some other method like specific programs to disable...