I recently purchased an Xpert Vision RADEON 9550 256 mb graphics card, and I am having problems with it crashing in-game. (My system is Windows XP Home Service Pack 2, Intel Pentium 4 2.0 Ghz, 256 MB RAM)

It is worst when I load up a game with an opening cinematic. It dumps me back to the desktop, and the only way to keep the game up on screen is to click madly away for a while. Strangly enough, this only really happens on older games, such as Patrician 2, Europa Universalis 2, Desperados, AOE 2 etc., but I can run games like F.E.A.R. and King Kong perfectly.

I am getting really annoyed with this problem, as I miss out on in-game movies (it dumps me when I do a campaign on AOE2 for example, and I miss the movie) and it often causes the program to freeze up and not respond. Also, the continous clicking is getting really annoying too.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Hello and welcome to Techspot!

Two quick questions just to rule out the easy stuff

1. I assume you have already downloaded and installed the latest drivers for your video card, but have you tried updating your motherboard's chipset drivers?

2. Who makes your PSU and how many watts is it rated at?

Some of those older games were designed for Windows 95,98 and NT. If you have problems running them in Windows XP, you should try changing the compatibility mode. In all cases, make sure you install all of the updates and game patches. Inevitably, all games have a patch or two or three....