is this hurting my computer?

Generally, no. It just means the system is unable to render those areas sufficiently fast. Most 3D games or emulators always run at full load (unless there's some defined FPS cap or other such thing). Whether it's running at 20 FPS or 120 FPS the load level (and the stress on the system) will be the same.

Unless it's driver based, a piece of software cannot generally harm a computer if the computer has sufficient cooling.

Even drivers would have a hard time of adversely affecting hardware. Unless a videocard O/C utility went completely haywire or something.

Well if you have cheap parts, a wayward driver could easily cook your computer a bit. Still, you'd have to have one old computer to have yourcomponets get owned by an insidious driver.

I still think no. In my years working with computers I have yet to see software affect hardware.....barring aforementioned things like O/C utils.

Not affect hardware, but over time it can where out parts. I had a Imac once that burned out overnight because it was frozen and the CPU was running at full tilt. It was an older model though. I myself have yet to see a modern computer brought to its knees by software.

Any 8bit directdraw game on windows 7!

some freak rogue thread issue is causing them to randomly eat 100% of the cpu and effectively lockup all input access. only fix is reboot atm....