it was driver related. for some reason the newer drivers are causing this problem.
i just installed the drivers from the CD and everything worked fine. after that… i tried a new beta version of what i had before (93.71…updating to beta 93.81)… and the problem still happened.
so i am going to install the old version (91.47) to see if that will work fine. If not, then i will just use the drivers from the CD and call it a day