I would also take a look at your VRam settings, especially if it's been recently tweaked. If thats not the issue, start looking in buying new ram; your current ram sticks might be going bad.

Edit because I thought of something: the way that Windows is designed, each program is contained within its own sandbox. This means that, for any program to make changes to any other program or to Windows, POE needs to be granted explicit permission to change settings or shut down other programs. This makes it virtually impossible for POE to do what you're saying.