A problem I experienced early on was that my video card would go buggy and I would get lines through the screen. Switching between window and full screen fixed.
The permenant solution was to download driver cleaner 3 (
http://www.drivercleaner.net/dc.htm) run it on my machine to clean up history of video drivers then reinstall the drivers.
Good tip on the other item to install, I'll try that (the problem still happens occassionaly but not every session anymore).