Wow I am really impressed with the tech support here! So many great replies and so quickly! I did take apart my case and the fan was indeed off, though that GPU - Z still doesn't show the fan as working even though it is struggling to work. It is improving, but I found even if I just hit a wire the fan will try working for a bit and then stop. I don't have any compressed air so I was just using a bit of lung power to clean the dust out
Hopefully after getting the wire in the right spot it won't stop at all. It was at only a few seconds, now it is going several minutes, woo!!
Thanks for the driver link. I think it was supported (not mentioned well) in forceware versions past that but only up to a certain one. I had them and them I removed them because of some funkiness with doom 3 and now I forget what they were, DOH. In any case, making lots of progress. So far so good on the monitor not going fuzzy, though a strange thing was when I had the comp off and monitor unpluged the "your cable isn't connected" or whatever message the monitor gives was fuzzy. I think the signs are all there for a new comp, but I would also like to keep this comp in running order to act as a server or backup.
Thanks everyone so much for your time! <3 slaminsystems Take care.
-mike