hehe, Nukem, my computer may be screwed up now but it’s still no worse off than it was before 
anyway, I got the monitor issue fixed - I found the drivers that it came with. As for my modem, well…I went and downloaded the driver, or should I say drivers because it when I went to install my new modem and clicked “have disk” and selected the directory that I’d copied everything too it gave me a list of about 10 drivers to choose from, all of them letters & numbers except for one that has an actual name. When I install one of the drivers that’s named with numbers & letters, it just says “driver was installed” and that’s it. Modem still won’t respond.
The one with an actual name, however, when installed causes window to bring up a window saying “New Hardware Detected - Wave Device Voice Modem” or something along those lines. Suffice to say, I believe this is the right driver since it’s the only one that windows actually reponds too. Problem is that when I go to Control Panel → System → Device Management and click on the properties for my modem, it gives me an error saying “Unable to read Port from Registery”, altho once I click okay it loads the rest of the properties without a hitch.
So I think there’s something wrong with the driver I downloaded, it installs just fine but then there’s that error when I try to view it’s properties, plus the fact that the modem still just won’t work 
I known I downloaded the right driver, and I know I’ve got the right COM port soooo…I dunno what to think
to those of you who are curious…it’s a “Zoltrix” Conexant 56K, not sure if it’s v90 or K56Flex (or whatever it is) but regardless, it isn’t working! grrr!!
oh well, at least I can play games without them looking all gimpy