Pop-up menus dissapear

[lnv001]

I have a Dell Inspiron 1501 and it seems that after a loooong time of the sims 2 working when I click on a sim or something else for a sim to take action on the pop-up menus disappear within a second. I don't have any time to get them to do anything. It really sucks and from what other searching I have done it seems to be a problem with my specific laptop...nothing to do with having vista over XP. Hopefully someone can help me through this I have looked online but can't seem to find anything that works. Another site mentioned redoing windows but that is not something I want to do!!!