Framerate/Performance Problems after Reformatting

Hey all,

I have an Acer Aspire One 751h that I purchased a couple years back. Since then I have upgraded its RAM with another 1GB stick (totaling 2GB) and reformatted the hard drive and partitioned it for multi-booting. I reinstalled Windows XP Home that was originally on the machine on one of those partitions. I then proceeded to install all of the appropriate drivers and BIOS image.

The problem I've now found is when running Diablo 2 (or even when viewing websites with heavy Flash or other animation use) there is major slowdown. To quantify this, when playing Diablo 2 I probably get around 5 FPS after setting all of the game's graphics settings as low as possible. When I activate the minimap/map overlay the framerate drops down to 1 or 2 FPS. Compare this to the reported 30 FPS with 1 GB on this site's compatibility list. I've also seen other anecdotal evidence that others have played Diablo 2 on their AAOs without problems. Also, looking at the minimum requirements for Diablo 2, my AAO surpasses them in every aspect.

So my question is, what could be the cause of this issue? Initially I diagnosed it as a problem with the Intel VGA driver not being properly installed or possibly the absence of the correct BIOS image which caused any graphics hardware to not setup correctly at boot time. But after re-installing all the drivers a second time and reflashing the newest BIOS image the problem persists.

Is there a source of this problem I may have overlooked or anything I can do to remedy my situation? I'm not opposed to more drastic measures such as reinstalling the OS entirely or anything of that sort. I'm trying to use my AAO as a LAN machine I can carry around for some older games like Diablo 2, so I'll be really disappointed if I can't get this worked out. Feel free to ask for any additional information or clarification and any help you could give would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Tynged