Joshua,

A couple of things you could try:

RIGHT click on the desktop, choose "Properties", then click on the "Settings" tab. When that loads, click on the 'Advanced' button in the lower right and move the "Hardware Acceleration" slider one "notch' below "Full". click on "apply", OK, etc.

While still in the "Settings" tab, you could reduce the screen color to something like "High color (16 bit)" which should also put less load on the system.

In addition, you could reduce the screen resolution, possibly to "800 X 600".

Hope this helps.

Grif