well, from what i gathered 2000 was maybe the best alternative to XP, in the way of gaming. Unfortunately 98 out of the picture for even relatively old games. And windows me?... well, enough said.
XP is fine, but i don't have my own legal copy anymore, i had an OEM but that is gone. Besides even if i did have one, 2000 runs less **** in the background, generally better performance from 2000. (even if i mess with msconfig) to maximize performance.
Acer apire 1640..(laptop)
776 DDR2 ram
128 shared video mem
What struck to me is that i did have to download specfic drivers for my graphics card.. infact, even xp requires additional drivers from intel. only my OEM XP came with those specific drivers.. Now that i think back.. i did have some similar things happening around that time i installed updated drivers. I didn't pay attention (i wasnt gaming much).. i concluded the latest drivers were causing this problem.
SO! about half an ago, i downloaded previous versions of the drivers.. So far no crashing, but i could have just been lucky so far.. so, i will be gaming alot tonight, i will post and let you know if i have solved it or not.