Hi everyone. Thanks to anyone who reads this: my problem is driving me crazy. I recently installed a demo (Dawn of War, Winter Assault) from gamespy.com. After installation, I attempted to start it up and the game kept freezing. I thought the intro to the campaign was faulty, so I attempted a Skirmish. It started up, but kept freezing every few seconds. The second would loop the same 5 seconds over a few times and then "BBBUUUUZZZZZ" and the game would unfreeze for a few seconds. The whole process starts over again and continues until I close the game manually. I reinstalled the game and tried again. Same problem. I figure it doesn't like my set-up and try another game. Indigo Prophecy. Same problem. It freezes every few seconds with the sound looping. Half-Life 2 does it too, among a few other games. I'm noticing now that my whole system seems extremely slow and "stuttering". When I move my mouse around, the image "skips" and jumps everywhere. When I play movies, they stutter for the first few minutes before continuing normally. Music files alone are fine. Old games play reasonably well, but still jump a bit. No looped sound, however. Oddly enough, the demo for Age of Empires 3 ran well, with the "freeze + BUZZZZ" happening very rarely and not happening time after time. I have tried several things to solve this problem: Reinstalled games. Reinstalled drivers, both sound and graphics. Reinstalled DirectX. I even reinstalled Windows. Same deal. In fact, it's actually getting worse. The problems happen more frequently, and the games stutter more. I have ran virus scans, spyware scans and cleared out everything. I've defragged and have plenty of space on my harddrive. All scans, actually, say my computer is perfectly healthy. I am stumped. I have no idea what to do. I don't want to do an entire reformat unless that's the only option. I especially do not want to do a reformat and find that the problem still occurs. Please help! My specs: Windows XP Home Edition GeForce 5200 FX (not the best card, but it runs) Pentium 4 2.66 Soundblaster Live! 5.1. Asus motherboard. I've experimented with drivers and no difference. The temperature in my case also stays around the 40c mark. Thank you VERY much for any help you can provide.

Tried updating your motherboard's chipset drivers? Please help survivors of Hurricane Katrina...err...Rita. Starting to lose track... www.redcross.org

Check this out: http://www.itch.com/Forum_Dawn_of_War_Technical_Help-58385.html You may find your answer there. home page was hijacked byhttp://magicsearch.try this, if you have any backupregistry data files,merge them in to current , or if you have several , i did. i merged about 5 or six. rebboot. it has been

Thanks, randy. Posted there for some info. heropsycho: updated them from Intel. Had a spot of trouble finding them. Didn't help at all.

1. check your CPU temperature and ensure fan is working normally. 2. double check to ensure that you get the CORRECT driver installed. 3. download "memtest" to check if the ram is the culprit. http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=964 hope this help.