I am cursed. First off, thanks to everyone on this board as everyone has been very helpful and I have learned a lot. Ok, back to my issue. I have a Gateway 500S computer that was purchased new approx. 20 months ago. It is running XP, 2.27 Ghz, 512 RAM, etc. As the PC came with an integrated onboard video card running 48 Megs, I decided it was time to upgrade so that I can play the new (and future) games being released. To start, I downloaded the latest BIOS and mobo drivers for my PC. All of that went well. I found out from Gateway that my mobo has a 4x AGP slot. I opened up the PC and there she is. It was my understanding from other topics in this forum that I could use a new 8x card (like a Radeon 9600SE or GeForce 5200 FX, both 128 8x cards) even though I have the 4x slot. I tried both of those cards. In both cases, my PC went haywire. Blue screens, .dll errors, shut downs in multiple programs (IE, games, Word, etc.). Downloading new drivers does not help at all. I also verified via my BIOS that when I install the new card it shuts off the onboard video and uses the new AGP. I also disable the onboard video via the Control Panel. All in all, no luck. But I can get back into Safe mode each time to undo things. So I e-mail Support (Gateway) who tells me that I cannot run a 8x card in my 4x slot. Ok, fine. I take back the 8x card and get a 4x card (ATI Radeon 9000 64 meg 4x card). Not as fast as I wanted Meg wise, but if it works at least something does. Well, the new card is also forcing my PC to go haywire. Same problems as before: blue screens, .dll errors, shut downs in IE, etc. Any thoughts? I believe I may just be cursed with this PC but if anyone has any thoughts that may help it would be greatly appreciated. THANKS!

Dumb question, have you cleanly deinstalled the old drivers for your onboard video card ??? If you mix geforce and ati drivers all hell can break loose! And one thing, if you get bluescreens in windows then the videocard is already working on the board. Otherwise your monitor would just stay black! You should think about a totally new OS installation and if that works best get the Radeon 9600 back!!! Also check the bios and try a lower agp aperature size and set slower ram cas times!

Thanks for the response. Yes, I tried a whole new OS load of XP. I also made sure that the old drivers were gone. Neither worked for me.

One thing to check, is to go into your machine's bios and see if it is possible to disable the integrated Video. In my experience, all the integrated video hardware gets disabled when the bios detects a card in the AGP socket. To get into the BIOS on your machine it may require using a non-standard key. Usually it's the Delete key, but on some pre-builts (Dell, Gateway, HP, Compaq) it's F12 or F10. Another thing. That gateway person you spoke to wasn't telling the whole truth. If you are able to get video from the 8x card in the 4x slot. Then the 4x slot is delivering all the needs of the 8x card(power wise). If the errors are the same when using a 4x card, then go back to the 8x card. I've looked up some of the AGP8x specs and there is almost no difference between AGP4x and AGP8x as standards. Even the AGP bus timing is still 66Mhz on the AGP8x, just like 4x. The only thing the 8x has is increased bus bandwidth, but it SHOULD run fine in your machine.

go in windows update and update yours driver from microsoft upadte nvidia software microsoft has nvida update or try in the bios to disabled sideband addresing on you agp bue, from macedonia