Alright, so this is kind of messed up, and it's stopping me from working AND playing on my laptop (Which is unfortunately my main computer)
When I'm using some APPLICATIONS (Any game, even simple web games, and some 'tools', namely Macromedia Fireworks 8, also Video in Windows Media Player, and often in Quicktime) that should work perfectly on my computer (it passes the recommended requirements), do work perfectly, but only for a few minutes, then they get extremely choppy, almost freezing up my computer. when I leave it sit for a few minutes, the program usually returns to normal, but sometimes closes down altogether. This has been happening for a few months now, but at first I blamed it on a specific game. I restored the factory defaults for my HARD drive, but the problem persists.

The system I'm using is an Acer "Aspire 3620"What happened before this started?
What MALWARE protection do you have?Everything was fine before it started happening...
As for protection, it was probably sometime between my Norton expiring and getting ZoneAlarm. It was a pretty big gap, but like I said,at the time I just thought it was one game, maybe because of too MANY objects on-screen, but it's happening even when I'm listening to music now.Did you do anything before it started?
Is this Zonealarm firewall, AV or what?
What other protection do you have?