jamiestuart

Are you able to try a different graphics card just to eliminate the possibility?

You should do a full virus scan asap using AVG Free for example

Why dont you install VMware player and give it a try first? That way you can keep your current XP install and play around with linux It can take a while to do basic things though.

I like linux because all the programs/services have plain config files and command line ability to do things Great when used with cron etc

In my experience ext3 is the most reliable, its good for data too.