How do I fix slowed computer animations

Lately my computer's animations have been going slowly, I'm not sure what it is that I've done, or not done, and I'm not sure what to do. The animations I am talking about deal with, for example, the toolbar at the bottom of the screen when you hover over an opened icon a window quickly comes up, but now it comes up at about 1/3 the speed. And any kind of video files I try to play are incredibly choppy and difficult to play and watch.

I'm thinking it could be one of 3 things but I'm not entirely sure:

1. my dad is currently changing our house server from a Windows serve to a Mac Server (don't question it, I know, but it's actually quite a bit better), and my computer hasn't yet been updated to the new server with a new-but-the-same profile, which also might explain why my computer's start up has also been fairly slow.
2. the fact that my computer is fairly old, with a Core 2 Quad CPU, and a fairly old graphics card, and the fact that I've been hooked up to a second monitor (actually a TV) for the last few days. I don't really think it's this one, because it never gave me any problems up until now, and the TV has been plugged in for about 7 days now.
3.I very recently ran a program called CCleaner, and cleared out old Windows and Application caches and whatnot. I'm not sure if something that I cleared would cause a slow down of this degree, and since I've run the CCleaner with the exact same settings as before and it didn't cause this problem, I'm not sure what it would have done. (I've attached a jpg of the settings that I have in CCleaner for the Windows tab)

I've checked for driver updates for my video card, to which there are currently none, and there are no Windows updates currently needed or available except Bind, which I will ignore.

Not sure what else there is to say about this subject, except what do I do? If there's anything else I can give you that I don't know to give, please say.

Thanks!