Do you use ATI Control Center? I've not had any luck with it trying to jack up my card a bit. Even when I have tried "autotune" it locks up the machine and I can only get back in using safe mode on a reboot. PITA.
I just removed IE8 and am advising all I know to follow suit. The hackers are out in force and two virus & spyware demons have in the last 4 days infected computers running IE8. I just removed Firefox and installed Chrome for my browser. The virus villain puts a red circle with a white cross in the lower right hand corner w/a popup stating you are infected and need to be scanned/scammed. The other is Spyware2009 and back doors Firefox & IE8.