I think AIM is being stupid... although, I'm connected fine at RIT, but it took me way too long to connect from here... blah... no one good is on, anyway(or atleast that isn't away..) Blah. I'm in the process of finding updated drivers for the sound card.. currently, I've uninstalled it... I was going to reinstall from the drivers disk, but then I realized that was the disk from when they had ME... now that they've upgraded to XP, I've got to find some hopefully updated better non-sucky drivers... I don't understand the problems(although, they might be similar to yours, Heather) mostly because they aren't constant... just randomly stupid. gah. I'll update on my progress later today.