need serious help with gf2 and msi kt3 ultra2

[killabeas]

okay....first off, i have been searching around these forums, and various other forums all night and have yet to find an answer, so if there is another post in here with the answer i'm looking for, please don't flame this thread, cause i have all but burned out my retina's looking for an answer.

i put together a new system the other day with the following specs:

MSI KT3 Ultra2 mobo
AMD 2100+ XP cput
512Mb PC2700 Crucial Ram
350w Enermax PSU
Linksys 10/100 PCI NIC
LeadTek 2000XP PCI Tv Tuner Card
Maxtor 7200 Rpm 40 Gig HD
16x Pioneer Dvd Rom
52x Lite-On Cd-Rom

AND

Gainward 64Mb GF2 w/ TV out

after a fresh install of WinXP Pro, i thought all was going well. I installed dang near everything on the driver cd, and was just using the XP default GF2 Ti drivers. Doing random stuff, my computer locked up, and rebooted, and i got a popup saying that the video drivers were at fault. No big deal i though.... i had the vid card in a 750Mhz machine based on the A7V board before, and it was always real picky about drivers. I installed the newest detonators i could find... 30.82 i think. Booted up fine... As soon as I went to install SOF2 (Soldier of Fortune 2 for those of you that are gaming impared ) it locked up again. I remember seeing on one of my mates' machines that was playing SOF2 at the time, that when you pop in the cd, it goes to the menu screen where you can play, install, configure, etc SOF2, but there is a small movie playing in that window. That movie never came up, and machine locked up. I installed any and all updates from the windows update site and tried again. Still no luck. I removed the drivers, and tried the 21.83, 21.81, and a 23.xx drivers, and even 28.xx drivers. All giving me the same result. I installed the 4.38 via 4in1's, and that didn't help either. BUT, to make matters worse, I know that this problem isn't game specific. I get the same lockup when i try to run the nVidia Earth Viewer, and DX based screeensaver, or dam|\| near anything that has to do with graphics. I almost tried to install CS, knowing that I could run the game in OpenGL, but my cd was not in the jewel case (i lose cd's faster than a scalded dog). I am almost at a loss for words. I am probably going to get the Asus ti4200 when i get my next paycheck, but until then, i NEED a stable gaming machine. Any information, or tips or tricks, or hints, or resolutions would be greatly appreciated. I will check this post several times today, and reply as quick as i can.

Thanks In Advance

 

[Mem]

Hmmm could be IRQ problem even with XP,I would pull out all the PCI cards except video card and see if that has anything effect on the gaming,also if you`ve installed lots of different video drivers etc ,it might be a good idea to do another clean install again with minimal hardware and see if the games run fine then if they do add the other cards one at a time to see which one is the problem,I would keep PCI slot one empty(nearest to AGP slot).

I presume your CPU temps are ok,btw you don`t list your sound card so I presume you`re using the onboard sound so check it`s enabled in bios and you`ve the drivers installed for it.

Some bios tweaks as well won`t do any harm,disable video ram cacheable,disable system bios cacheable,I normall disable all video shadowing and disable fastwrites as well,on my old MSI board I had ram settings for normal,fast,turbo,etc so you can try a lower setting and see if that has any effect,AGP aperture size should be 64mb or 128mb in general.

 

[FluxCapacitor]

I've had similar problems before.

Try disabling fast writes and sidebanding first for your video card.

Then take out all your PCI cards and see if that gets rid of the problem... Don't forget to disable sound! I had a sound card (Aureal type) that would cause the problems you describe if it was sharing resources with certain other devices.

If disabling all that solves the problem, add them back one at a time like mem suggested. That's your best bet. You'll know where the problem is for sure that way.