Cody,
Computers and their ilk can be very confusing and frustrating. I've been in the hardware and software business for several years now, and I find that there are still situations where the problem you are having absolutely makes no sense. Please try not to get frustrated. As to your questions, no you do not have to use a 4x graphics card. If you get an 8x graphics card, it will run at 4x in your mobo. This will slow the card down, but only at a data rate that doesn't exist on todays games. What this means is that even if you had an 8x AGP slot and an 8x video card, you wouldn't really notice any speed difference between it and the 4x version, all other variables remaining the same between the two systems. Whatever you do, do not buy a PCI grapics card. The PCI bus(datapathway) is much narrower than the AGP bus. In other words you can move more data accross the AGP bus vs the PCI bus. More data=higher speed. Also, don't rely on the Microsoft analysis, they are usually very broad assertations that might not be a good answer to your specific problem. As to the AOL lock up, I really don't know what could be causing that without seeing the exact error, along with exactly what you were doing when it occurred. I don't use AOL mysel, but I have always found that it is overpriced for what you get (Fair to middling connection speed, along with a mailbox that is stuffed with SPAM-unrequested email advertising). Oh well enough AOL bashing. I hope I have helped.

Allan