Transparency Not Working and Mysterious Background Activity

Hello All,

 

I recently upgraded my netbook to Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit and installed NIS 2010.  For some reason the transparency of the user interface stopped working.  Now when I press the performance button it opens a new window.  I had NIS 2010 installed when it was running XP and it worked just fine then.  I tried uninstalling and reinstalling NIS but to no effect.  Also I noticed that occasionally NIS will be doing some sort of background activity that does not show up on any of the logs.  It happens about once or twice a week for 20 minutes and then stops.  It happens while I am using the computer, uses a lot of the cpu and causes a lot of hdd activity.  I noticed that the hdd activity light flashes in a regular beat pattern throughout the 20 minute span which seems irregular for an hdd.  The reason I do know it is NIS is because the yellow cpu usage shows up on the performance graph but it doesn't say what exactly it was doing.  So

 

1. How to I get the transparency back?; and

2. What is this mystery activity?

 

Thanks much!