htchien: I hoep Ive had a small stroke of good luck. Upon removing the cover of my system, I saw a ton of caked-in dust stuck in my heat sink. I blew out what I could with compressed air, and pulled the rest out with toothpicks and then put it all back together. My system runs much cooler now, over 20 degrees cooler, and I was finally able to make a dvd with Ulead
Hopefully thats all my problem was, but just in case my CPU is damaged (hopefully it isnt) I'm going to start pricing replacements in the event I need a backup.
Thanks again to everyone for their help.