[Unit 00]

Actually... the current third party decision is that Vista's graphics are on par with XP's, but that's arguable based on whether your machine has the power to give to Vista to actually show it.

ANd yes, ctrl+alt+delete does go to a window that allows you to switch users/log out and all that, but that window's priority level is above that of explorer.exe and has a well labeled button right there on it to launch the task manager. Though as you said that is useless since you can't get that far.

And as a note, if it doesn't work while testing either stick, you could be one of those horribly rare annomalys that somehow screwed up both sticks. It happens, my cousin managed it...

And people have hated every Microsoft OS when it has come out, and a lot of people say that the new ones are bloated, but that goes all the way back to MSDOS, which people complained about being bloated. But because of that they have been forced to make better and faster computers to carry the load without too much of an issue which made them decide to make a newer and better OS. It's a lovely cycle that pretty much just means better games, better graphics and faster computers. Give it another year and things should smooth out, though that s forever away and i want it all smoothed out now...

Back-On-Topic: Anways, I wish you luck ans hope it is just a bad RAM issue since RAM is probably the best thing to have die on you since it doesn't contain your computer's data on it and can be swapped without too much hassle.