Video problem with CS4.2

Question

I am having an unusual problem with my cs4 programs, noticed most within PPro and AE.  Quite frequently my entire monitor image will momentarily shift a few pixels down and to the right.  It will return to its correct alignment within less than a second.  Also, when I click on a menu item, the drop down menu will appear correctly for about a second then disappear until I run my cursor over the area where the menu should be.  At which point the menu will reappear one line at a time beneath the cursor.  When the item appears, I can activate it normally with one click of the mouse.  This also happens when I access my title screen, Media Encoder screen (from within PPro), etc.  The programs have also started freezing on me more frequently, requiring me to close out using Task Manager; sometimes even requiring a reboot.  Otherwise, the programs seem to function fine.
I operate in WinXP Pro and work in standard def with the following hardware (all drivers are up to date):
     Asus p5q3 deluxe motherboard with 4gigs of memory
     ATI Radeon HD 2900xt with 512mb of memory
     Matrox RT.x2
I know just enough about computers to be dangerous, but I'm wondering if this sounds like a video card problem.  Does anyone have any ideas?
Thank you.

Answer 1

Bob,
You are correct. Once upon a time I had the Canopus DVStorm with Premiere 6.x and it worked great (and a DVRaptor before that). Then came Premiere Pro and the problems that the DVStorm had were insurmountable so I dumped it and got the RTX-100 which was reputed to be about as good as the DVStorm was in the past. Was I disappointed! It just did not work reliably, hangs, BSOD's, unresponsivess and then when PR CS2 came out you effectively had to get the RTX.2, which was paramount to throwing the RTX.100 down the drain. It seemed to me that with every new version of CSx you needed to get a new Matrox card at extravagant prices for what it offered and still had to wait very long for decent drivers to come out. It just wasn't worth the effort anymore. And when you look here at problems that people experience, the common denominator is usually the Matrox card. So, yes, I am glad I got rid of it and found a very useful purpose for the card: a doorstopper, which must have been the intention of the engineers to start out.
About Win7: No, I did not have any doubts at all, but in my case I was lucky enough to have a high level network consultant with all kinds of certificates and an impressive experience to advise me and he juist plain told me: "You DON'T want Vista!!! GET WIN7!!! I have been using it for several RC's and it is a revelation." Now after installing and using it for some time, I can only agree.