i finally found out what was causing my computer to constantly crash/take forever to load up, it was my video card drivers. i had to uninstall my nvidia drivers and disable my display adapter for my comp to work normally. it seems as though ANY driver I download for my video card will screw up my comp. it's not about bad driver version. this problem just recently started happening. my vid card is GTX 280. not sure what to do now as if I try to install any driver it'l mess my comp up. but now without drivers I can't play anything.