the rig is:

pentium d 820 2.8 ghz o'clocked to 3.0 ghz
ecs rc410l/800 m 2.0 w/ radeon xpress 200 igp mobo
120 gig deskstr sata
512 ddr2 ram
audigy 2 platinum sound
rosewill 52x dvd combo
500 watt psu

i am having a few problems with this system

first off the ati xpress igp is supposed to be directx 9 compatible and upon installing dx 9 i get all kinds of popping noises when playing games. the only ones i have are gta: san andreas and age of empires 2. i get the popping noises with the windows starting up noises and playing music files. the music files stopped popping installing the new version of winamp. music doesn't pop in media player. all dxdiag

the second issue is with my monitor/ dvd player. i am using mp3+dvd xpack. when i put in a dvd i get the mesage saying that i need to lower my resolution and color depth. i lower them as low as possible and i still get the mesage. i am also unable to set my resolution higher than 800x600 on my monitor. its a generic ibm monitor. windows has the default monitor driver isntalled for it. i had it hooked up to a friends monitor because i don't have a dsl line. i was able to increase the resolution on the other monitor without getting lines all over the place. its a samsung 19 inch monitor with its own driver isntalled. i did not see if i was able to play a dvd on it however. using the latest catalyst/south bridge driver did nothing for me. i am usure if the problems i am having has to do with not having a name brand driver installed or not. i don't have a pcix gpu to try to see if that would help at all.

also after having isntalled service pack 2 i have 2 instances of ati2evxx.exe running in the processes and i have 3 instances of cli.exe running. seems like too many. and i installed .net 1.1 like the ati site says to have installed. i used windows update. i also installed .net 2.0. they both show under the add/remove programs. should they both be installed still or should 2.0 have been installed over 1.1, or should i just have one or the other installed.

any help/tips would be greatly appreciated.

I think you nailed it down to driver problems dude.
Is this a fresh load of Windows? If so you might want to load it again and get all your drivers installed in this order: (remove sound card)

Chipset
DirectX 9 (not needed if SP2 is on OS setup disk)
Video driver
Rest of onboard motherboard parts (including sound). Make sure all the onboard stuff works.
Disable the sound in BIOS and/or device manager or both.
Then install Sound Blaster.
Then all windows updates

That should get everything working right. Take any overclocking OFF as a test.
The default monitor driver may not cut it, try updating the driver to "Plug and Play monitor" instead.
the ati2evxx and cli files are part of the ATI drivers and are probably fine. I also have the cli's running for my card. Though I don't know why they need more then one, but whatever.

.NET framework 1.1 and 2.0 are sepparate deals I believe, 2.0 doesn't "upgrade" 1, but is in addition, or something like that. So that's fine. You probably want both. Though .NET 2.0 programs are not around much right now, most people don't load it unless they HAVE to for some program they want.

To try and fix the sound problem now, I'm thinking something between the sound blaster and onboard sound. Make sure onboard sound is disabled in the BIOS. Or else remove the sound blaster and see if the onboard sound works better. Sound Blaster's can be tricky in respect to drivers, I never like loading them. Try to get the latest driver off the soundblaster web site.

Anyhow, I hope that qualifies as "any help/tips".

Good luck!

ok i tried a fresh install with order using all the latest drivers and the sound blaster is still causing problems. the onboard sound does work better, no popping noises in games. i have the i/o front panel for the sound blaster and that doesn't pop anymore either when i run my sattelite through it. i don't want to be stuick witout the panel if i am goin to not be able to use my sb. it osunds better with my 400 watt logitech system

i tried switching the monitor to plug and play and that didn't do any good either. i think maybe that monitor just doesn't support any higher resolutions.

I had the same problem.

Install the sound first on a clean install of windows, restart then video, etc/

I don't suppose it's your actual SPEAKERS going bad? Can you test them on something else? Speakers can pop and hiss when there are problems on the cable and connection.
Just a thought...

i know its not the speakers. i only have the problem when playing a game. i've noticed that when like playing age of empires that the sounds seem to lag as they pop if that makes sense. i will probably try maybe doing another fresh install and see if that works. i am going to submit a query to ati and creative about this and see what they say. before i do another install. i will post again when i see what they say

i submitted an inquery to creative and they showed me how to disable all unecessary services as well as cleaning out the driver completly and it worked. thanks to all who offered advice. now i need to tackle the issue of getting a dvd to play. i am using dvd xpack. i keep getting a video subsystem error no matter how i tweak any settings. i wonder if like power dvd would work or if i would get the same message. i really almost hink it has to do with the integrated ati xpres video chipset. any other suggestions about the dvd issue would be great.