First, here is what I have: XP Pro with SP1 and all updates installed ECS K7S5A Socket A (not the 2.0 USB but about 2 yrs old) AMD Athlon XP 2600+ nVidia GeForce 4 4400 2 HD's - main 40 gig (containing XP O/S) and second for extra storage 120 gig CPU runs at 47 degrees Second, my problem: I was in a game (Max Payne 2) the other night and enabled the developer code in the target path of the shortcut. Doing this allows you to play any character that appears in the game. Game loaded up and I hit Page Down to move through the characters. My machine froze. I thought no big deal and rebooted the machine. That was two weeks ago and many troubleshooting hours later, I still am not working. The problem initially started out that when I booted up the computer, it would run extremely slow and the icons were huge and couldn't be adjusted beyond 640x480 and 8-bit colors. So I immediately thought my $250 video card had fried after having it for 1 year. I started doing some troubleshooting. The computer is having trouble recognizing the video card drivers. Well, that is only half true. If I go into the Hardware Device Manager and then check out Display Adapters, the card is shown there. But, if I then go into Settings of Display Properties, it simply shows Default Monitor on.... (the card is not shown there.) Clicking on Advanced and then looking at the Adapter shows nothing as well. The drivers simply won't load. At one point, I was able to get the computer to recognize the driver by uninstalling the adapter in Device Manager. Then taking the card out of the machine, reinstalling, and then booting up in Safe Mode. Installed the drive successfully there, rebooted, and it came to the desktop ok. Went into Display Properties and the drivers showed there. However, the second I would try to move the screen size to anything higher than 640x480 or move the color to 16 or 32, bam, it would get slow again, the screen would wig out, and become useless. Uninstalling the driver again and rebooting would then correct the problem but what good is a gaming computer if the 3D video drivers don't work? Other things I have done, but the problem still exists: 1) Ran the utility on the XP disk that will fix problems with the O/S 2) Ran Scandisk on my C and D drives and scanned for bad sectors on the HD - none found 3) Loaded every single XP update and driver update from Microsoft 4) Ran a complete virus scan from Norton's online virus scan - nothing found 5) Tried the newest drivers for my card from nVidia and ran their clean up utility to get rid of the old drivers 6) Formatted my C drive and reinstalled XP, reloaded all MS updates and drivers. This actually fixed the problem, but only for about 20 minutes. The problem came right back. 7) And the kicker and where I am at now - tried a different video card (GeForce 3). Same problem. Does anyone have some questions or suggestions that will help me get through this? This setup was working flawlessly for several months. The only thing new to the machine is the AMD Athlon and the 120 gig HD. Both were installed a couple of months ago. My next thought is to try a different mobo or flash the one I have with a new BIOS version.

I dont think its a virus, but forget about Norton anyway!!! USE kaspersky antivirus, the best one out there: http://www.kaspersky.com/ Try to install win98 (+ directX 8) on your second hard drive, disconnect the one with XP, install the game, and see if the problem is gone. Let me know if it works!

Exactly same problem. Have XP (Intel 1.7 Ghz). Ti4200 worked fine for 1yr. Used Nvidia 41.09 driver. 5 days ago I've made a mistake on allowing MS crap to run Windows Update. It found MS Nvidia driver (dated 6 Oct 2003) and installed to my system. Had no problems for a day or two untile reboot PC. After reboot screen blanks every few seconds. So booted to safe mode, uninstall MS crap, rebooted to safe mode and installed old Nvidia driver. Rebooted and it came up (slowly) to 800x600 resolution with hips of black spots on the screen. Display Properties/Adapter shows VGA driver. Can change resolution to 1280x but still no sign of proper driver. Games don't work as MS VGA driver doesn't support OpenGL. Tried every nite for the last few days many attempts (different Nvidia driver, various utilities to clean the system from residuals of Nvidia drivers, etc). MS driver keeps coming back ... Spent hours researching net. Few ppl having similar problems. Control Panel/Device Mgr shows NVIDIA GeForce Ti4200 w AGP8X under unknown devices. Add/Remove programs doesn't show Nvidia XP driver as it used (despite dozens of installations).