Radeon HD 3870x2 Fails to Open Poser 7 or Blender

Hello.

For some reason, whenever I try to open one of these programs, my computer will come to a complete freeze requiring a hard reboot. I can not even open the program to change settings because by then my system is hanging.

I think this could possibly be OpenGL related? DirectX seems to be functioning well. I noticed that when I try to render a Reactor Scene in 3ds Max 2009, my system will freeze as well.

My graphics card is not faulty, because I can play games just fine.

My System Specifications:
E8400 @ 3.0ghz
Sony DVD-RW
Western Digital 500gb HDD
HIS Radeon HD3870x2
Patriot 4gb @ 800mhx 4-4-4-12
Gigabyte DS3L
Rosewill 600w
Raidmax Smilodon
Windows Vista x64

I have Catalyst 8.8 Drivers. I tried 9.6 but they resulted in a System Crash. lol I am not installing that mess again.

Maybe this could make the OS avoid using ATi’s drivers:
ControlPanel->Display->Settings->Advanced->Troubleshoot->HardwareAcceleration->None

Good thinking. But I can’t access Hardware Acceleration with Catalyst Control Center installed.

Any other thoughts come to mind?