Flickering black screen trying to get to char selection

[kelfegar]

I just downloaded to my home machine, as I usually play at work. At work I have no issues at all, yet here at the house, after I log in and it trys to go to the character selection screen, all the screen does is gimme a one second blackscreen flicker and never loads the char selection screen. I thought it might be a problem with my graphics cards (I am running a Radeon 4850) so I updated the drivers. No luck. I then thought it might be a firewall setting, but I have windows forewall shut off and am using McAfee, and I turned THAT firewall off. I am at a loss. Any suggestions???

[kelfegar]

I followed the advice in another thread that had kinda similar issues and it worked for me, it WAS a graphics issue like I thought. Now when I get to the Character selection screen, MY CHARACTERS are GONE!! *** over??? Because I upped to a VIP account I have to start over??