All right so here's what happened:
1.) A few days ago I went to a local Target and bought a Logitech Quickcam for roughly $25.
2.) I brought it home, installed the drivers, etc. I tested it on its QuickCapture program that came with it, and both taking pictures and recording videos worked.
3.) The next day I used it on msn for a good amount of time, occasionally having to restart the connection because it froze.
4.) I tried to play counter-strike and it shut down with a quick flash of a blue screen error and a reboot. I unplugged my webcam and CS worked fine.
5.) Since then, my webcam has caused my computer to reboot whenever I try to record a video or start a live session on stickam.com(also a few times when I tried to use my microphone by itself on AIM). I haven't checked msn yet, but I think it will work there because it does not record sound with the video. I think it's a problem with switching between my headset's mic and my webcam's mic, because msn was the only thing that I had tested on before I tried playing CS and the QuickCapture will still let me watch my webcam feed. It just doesn't usually let me record video with sound.

If anyone has any clues how to help this, I would be very very grateful. I'm overdue for a new computer(this one is about 8 years old) but my current computer meets the minimum system requirements of my webcam. I've tested it many times in the past couple days with no success. It has just rebooted my computer. It seems to work for a few seconds, and then I see a black screen and find it reloading windows.

My brother suggested it might be because I am "owned by spyware" in his exact words. I defragmented a day or two before I bought the cam, and ran ad-aware, avg, and spybot: s&d the same night.

And again, sorry if this isn't the right forum for this kind of help... Move at will, mods.

Also sorry for the extremely long post. I'm trying to be as helpful as possible here.

Check to make sure there are no patches for the software and that you have the latest drivers for the webcam. These should be found on the Logitech site under the particalar product you are using. It may be that some applications or games have conflicts with ANY webcam if they are both running concurrently.
Cheers,
John

Kor as jgweed suggests check for driver updates, i have a logitech cam and there was a recent update for my model so it may apply to yours. you may also wish to check control panel / sounds and audio devices, and make sure you have the right mic selected that you wish to use. if your computer is old and only just satisfies the requirememnts for the web cam you may be experiencing some sort of resource drain while the camera is in use. I am only speculating but if your PC is light on in say ram or processing power once your cam is up and running there might not be much left in the way of power to handle other applications running at the same time as your cam.

good luck ! ;)

I checked for driver updates when I saw his reply, though I didn't bother replying saying that all I found was the QuickCam desktop messenger(which I downloaded) and a reinstall. I'm going to try the reinstall now. I have messed with switching between mics already many times to no avail. My computer has twice as much ram as required, but I still might just get a new one for this.