Ok so the subject was a little grand, but for my computer "IT"(dont even want to mention the word) has not happened for the last 5 days of HARD Gaming. Several hours a day (avg. 8 to 10, I whacked my ACL skiing, so I am bed bound).

Anyway my specs,

Duron 750
256 pc100 ram
Visiontek GF3 TI 500
Soundblaster live Xgamer
XP home edition.
VIA Apollo KT133 & 686A
Using XP via drivers ,just added the NEW 4.10b AGP driver. VERY NICE driver! No problems
nvidia 27.70



After months of different configs here is what has given me great stability.

#1 AND THE MOST IMPORTANT I think becasue I have done all of the others before, I removed ALL of my RAM and stuck in ONE stick. If you do have to use two, make them the same and put them on 1 and 3 (1 and 2 share).

#2 Turn Hardware acceleration on sound card down one notch, STANDARD HARDWARE not basic or FULL.

#3 MAYBE the most important, I took the fan off the Heatsink on my video card.

#4 Turned off autohide on taskbar.

System has minor XP tweaks. But most are at default except for visualization settings.

One of those did it, I have tried them all, doing system restores after each so I could restart fresh. Yes I actually wrote them down as I did them, and double checked.

One word of advice, dont just tweak your PC with tweak guides you find.
Wait awhile, especially if you have XP. Many are being found usless.

Games played so far,

TRIBES 2
Black And White
Serious Sam both ed.
Diablos 2 LOD
MOH
Unreal Tournament
HalfLife
Arcanum
Flashpoint
C and C Renegades
Empire Earth
Nascar Racing 4
MM Madness 2
Thief 2
Castle de Wolf
AVP2
Revolt


I played most for at least an hour, some everyday.

Who knows maybe I shouldnt have said anything. Ill let you know. lol

You may have solved one of the biggest problems ever in computing history.

Many will thank you including myself. I have to admit that I have only been stung once by the infinite loop error but its good to see that someone has honed in on what may have been the cause of the error and eliminated it.

Keep us updated on any issues you may have.

bravo!

for those International Members & newcomers who may not be aware of this condition:

Taking fan off - gfx card runs hotter - improves stability?
XP sure is weird.

Still no crash.


Hooked up a couple of periph's, sidewinder game pad and joystick.

XP support for these is weak but, it didnt crash. I thought enabling the gameport on SoundblasterLive might screw things up. So far so good.



note: I do have some extra fans, I just took the one off of the heat sink so stability from excessive heat is not an issue.

Just curious Yada, but have you tried to use the program I suggested in this post:

http://www.3dspotlight.com/vb/showth...=&threadid=531

It is for KT133 chipsets mainly and helps reduced idle system temps drastically by simply enabling a setting not shown in the bios, but provided by AMD. Also, this program can help increase memory performance! I've used it and seen great results. Just a thought that you might want to try it out!!!

Oh, and my system runs perfectly stable after making the changes, nothing was harmed.

One more thing, I'm still not clear on why you took your fan off your heatsink? Was it giving you problems? You can never have too much cooling!

http://207.115.70.83/forum/read_msg....7&forumid=ubb6
I fixed mine there, maybe mine was an uncommon fix to the problem, because I never see anyone but me suggesting the BIOS update.

Yeah I did the wpcredit idle tweak awhile ago. As far as tweaks go for me right now, Im not going to touch a thing. lol

Check out the new via agp driver, it has improved stability and speed on my system.

That's cool Yada, I'm glad your system is running great! I've downloaded the new AGP driver, but not installed it yet. Guess I'll have to tonight.

I'll get back on how it performs on my machine.

Still running. Not going to touch a thing. I have not had a !@#$% for.. well since 5 days before the original post.

Lessons I have learned, dont update drivers unless you are having problems.

I think a lot of problems are caused by the installing and uninstalling of via and nvidia drivers everytime there is a new beta posted.

Maybe thats why they call us nvidiots, lol.

Oh well good luck to the rest of you.

yours truly,

reformed nvidiaholic

:eek: