Message in a nutshell: didn't install agp motherboard drivers, radeon 9800 pro works in Windows XP without crashing or any stuff like that.

So here's the deal, besides the previously mentioned fact that the ATI radeon 9800 pro works just fine in Windows ME, in a little experiment today I decided to on a freshly formatted partition install Windows XP and on that install all of my sound and video card drivers, the one thing I left out in the experiment for the purpose of experimentation was the installation of the motherboard agp drivers. And guess what, even though it isn't as fast as it is on Windows ME, result: no crashes, no lockups, playability if you don't mind the slowness in high end games, so at least now I have an idea what to tell ATI tech support besides "oh my video card doesn't work in windows XP and I don't know why but I know it is something that revolves around the video card." Who knows, maybe this issue will actually get solved for more than just a specific type of athlon motherboard in windows 2000.