Before saying any more I went back to read carefully and find I linked back to what John already discussed extensively. I'll try to keep this one out of the department of redundancy department. :-/

I was doing a search on the common terms used here, and an idea has occurred. Do you regularly check back at the manufacturer's site for upgrades and information? My system is an HP Pavilion 9870, and it came with ME installed. I didn't want ME, but I couldn't run some of the devices without it, so I set up a dual platform. Though they don't like it (they advise against it) they finally provided all of the device drivers (except to play DVD's--I can use it for audio and data only) I needed to run Win2000. I have the Win2000Pro side set as default now. Check out your manufacturer and search on your model and see what is available to upgrade. Before you go looking, know what you have in your system. For me, and hopefully for you, the route to that information is:

Control Panel to System to Hardware to Device Manager

This device list tells you the make and model of all of the stuff in your particular system. Makes it easy to decide what to download and what to ignore.

Also, who made your monitor? It doesn't hurt to check to see if they have any new software to support it.

Hope this helps--maybe you can meet the geek at the door in the morning with a smile and a "no thanks--I did it myself!"

SRS