woohoo! got it working. thanks for the help everyone
what i still wonder, is why this driver went bad? i'm assuming that's what happened anyway. all i did was quit play AH, left the computer for a few hours for class, came back, went to start it up again and wammo! i have done this process many many times, so why should this one time cause a corruption? and noone else touched my comp in the meantime. i'm not the most computer savvy person so i guess i will always be left in the dark of such mysteries...