I've determined the issue revolves around the ATI/AMD 11.10 Preview 3 drivers and my hardware combination. I was able to replicate the issue after reformatting with a copy of the drivers downloaded from a different source. I guess I'm stuck using the older drivers for now.
So I've been messing around with varrious drivers to try and get "RAGE" working and to make this tumultuous process more agravating I've somehow inadvertently uninstalled my USB drivers as well. This wouldn't be an issue, except that my computer has no PS2 ports. long version: I used "GPU...