Monitor squealing after MS Silver auto update

I just got (about a month or so ago) a new Dell studio with Vista Home Premium. That was the first mistake. You've no idea how I wish I could've ordered it with XP, 'cause few things have worked as well or consistently (as in peripherals -- Vista didn't like the printer, or the camera, or the speakers, or the Blackberry, etc.) as they did with my old XP. Today the monitor started this sort of high-pitched squeal chirp. It only just started doing it, and there's other erratic behavior going on as well -- , like instead of the usual little cirular icon that spins 'round when a program is loading, it now flickers. I've turned off all the peripherals 'cause I know they sometimes interfere, but that isn't helping -- and none of them has changed positions anyway. Things were fine yesterday, now things are weird. I checked the updates and Windows automatically installed Microsoft Silver today. Could that be the problem?