The day I started folding I had the same trouble. I had installed the gee-whiz graphical client and it monopolized my OpenGL so I would have to stop folding in order to run any other application that needed OpenGL; mostly games.
Although I REALLY hated to lose the cool graphics, I bit the bullet and switched over to teh console client; chosing to run it as a service so it keeps going even when I'm logged off.
Here's my post explaining how to do that relatively painlessly. NOTE: I'm running under XP Pro, so modify your approach as necessary for your operating system.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1638783/posts#33
When I downloaded the console .EXE, I put it right in the same folder where the graphical client was installed so it could find all of the work files the graphical client had been using. This is key to getting it to pick up where the graphical client left off.
Good luck!
Thanks. I'm giving that a try.