It is not Deskscapes causing your problem I don't think, but rather the Dream itself.  I would recommend that if certain Dreams cause these issues, just don't use those Dreams as your system evidently is not capable of handling those Dreams and doing your video encoding at the same time, or don't run any Dreams at all while you are doing your video encoding. Evidently it's a trade off.

Yes, clearly it cannot.  The fact you have a problem demonstrates that.

I also play music while running FSX [particularly CPU/Graphic intensive]....I know I shouldn't but I take the performance hit anyway.

Simple advice....either run Dreams encoded/using codecs that do NOT cause issue...or shutdown processes when work is more critical.

Hint...no 'bad-ass' computer is really as bad-ass as you expect/would like... eventually they choke...

I say it has to be your Drivers or something.

cause I Have a Cheap PC Off the Self

Gateway DX4831
 Windows 7 Home Premium 64Bit
Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU 530 @ 2.93GHz 2 Core(s)

NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 1GB Ram

Physical Memory 6 GB RAM
Virtual Memory  11.86 GB

and it will play 2 Dream one on each Monitor

Run PS and Watch a Video and have 4 to 6 Tabs opened in FireFox.and ((2 to 4 windows Explorer opened

not to mention all the running Processes 107 +  

Finally a person that admits it and it's a mod. People writing in denial and blaming the system or user error (won't name). One guy mentioning monitors, what gives, I run 2 hannstar 24" 1920 X 1080 with two different dreams and no problems... the only time the problems are interjected is when I encode and pause the clocks jump from stock to O.C.. Just hard on Windows. It's not hardware, if anyone has ever used software based O.C.'ing utilities the end result is usually blue screen. 

When I disable deskscapes the lockups are gone and no matter what I do to they just simply don't happen. I'm not whining nor complaining I just thought it would be polite to point this issue out is all so all the hardcore fans don't need to get so defensive. 

...and whether it be a goliath (bad-ass as one guy said) of a system or grannies e-machine is besides the point and that's why I didn't mention it in my OP. The gist is that certain dreams down clock the GPU. It's just a pain in the arse disabling deskscapes everytime I want to do something CPU/GPU intensive, but nonetheless, can manage. Maybe, just maybe, it can be something Stardock can look into. 

Thanks for your time Bro,

Russ

I know it's not Deskscapes, it's the specific dream I may be running and I understand that but the fact remains it is Deskscapes that offers those specific dreams. That's like saying a billion dollar corporation gets busted for swindling millions and they turn around and say it's not their fault but rather their employees. Just generalizing here and am in no way implying this has anything to do with Stardock. It's just an anecdote.

I just checked and dreams by "the Car Guy" seem to work great specifically his fractal dreams,, ie - emeral isle, fractal flow, etc etc... but as soon as I switch to a dream encoded with mpeg-2 the GPU clocks right down (don't know why as it's a very basic codec). Is this normal? Look, I can run any dream and I don't see the performance at idle but as soon as I do something GPU intensive I can see the hit and the lower frames because the clocks are so low. Could it be unstable codecs that I may have on my machine?

Thanks,

Russ

I apologize if I may have came across as a douche, i wasn't trying to convey myself that way. 

When I'm encoding video it's usually wmv, divx, mkv or h.264. So I don't see why there would be a conflict. I see your point though as to windows cutting and cropping to fit my monitors resolutions thus appear "fuzzy" and distorted. Hmm?

All in all, it's no big deal... from here on I'll just temporarily disable deskscapes and do what I have to do.

Thatnks for your time,

Russ