Double-plus what he said! Having more than a bit of experience both with credit card companies and with customer service, I can assure you that that's all excellent advice.

Since you really don't have anything to lose at this point, here's a possible technical solution. I don't know any of the history of this laptop, but do you have any/all CDs that originally came with it? Specifically, do you have any drivers that came with this model? As odd as this may seem, often custom Windows drivers will be needed for various chipsets on the motherboard itself in order to take full advantage of them. I know that most full-size motherboards purchased at retail will come with a driver disc. This may be the case with the laptop as well, and if you don't have the original disc you may be able to scour the manufacturer's web site and find them. Once you get that, run the executable, or update the drivers for the appropriate motherboard components through Device Manager.

If nothing else, it won't make things any worse, and it just might fix the problem and hence save you some time and additional $.