I appriciate everyones help in this matter. to answer some of your questions, i am running XP and no the video card is not overheating, it remains suprisingly cool. all of the games are bought and paid for, so i dont think its corruption with the games. i went ahead and downloaded drivers and patchs for the soundcard and video card and as of right now, im installing service pack 1. i got all the windows updates already, i'll will let you know when service pack 1 is done installing and will do some testing. thanks again for all your help.