Thanks, you were correct (geforce drivers). I thought I had it set to autoupdate, so I hadn't bothered to check. Sorry for the false alarm, and thanks for following up.
oh yeah. one more question (couldn't see an edit function in the forums).
When it gives you options for the characters: 6) Is the only option always the transparency (not a bad thing, just don't want to check every time if that's always going to be …