[llama]

Odd, my Windows 7 offers the high performance setting. Try looking for a "show hidden options" button. It may not be open programs, but processes. You can find them in the task manager. You say this is a new hard drive? Can you state the specifications on it and not just the size? Lastly, you may want to think about upgrading that 1GB of RAM to 2GB, even if it's the minimum requirements, it may still be slow.