Hi, I just bought a new Athlon based PC with a Radeon 9700 Pro gpu. Everything is fine except for one thing. Just about every program that I use crashes on me at some time or another. I think it may be the gpu because the more graphics intensive programs (GTA3, MOHAA) crash much sooner than say, Internet Explorer. I went to ati's site and downloaded the latest driver (Catalyst 2.5) and yet I still have the same problem. Are there any older drivers that are sure to work that I can use? Can it be that the cooling fan on the gpu isn't working? When the program crashes it brings up a microsoft error message and kicks me to the desktop. Any suggestions?
Thank You in advance.

Is this a self buld PC or a pre built(like Dell, HP, etc...)?

Verify your power supply is adequate. How many watts is your power supply rated at? (Should be at least a 300 wat power supply.)

Did you have another video card installed before you installed the Radeon? If so, which card was it?

I am using a Radeon 9000 with the Catalyst 2.5 drivers and not having problems. (Not to say yours won't but at least it tells you the Cat 2.5 drivers are at least usable in my case.)

sounds like memory problems to me...try another stick if you have one lying around

nice "Ender's Game" reference there with the name =)

The system was built by ibuypower. It has an MSI KT400 mobo, Athlon XP 2400+ CPU, 512mb DDR-400 RAM, 80gig hd and the venerable Radeon 9700 Pro. The PSU is rated at 420 watts so thats not it. But there is one discrepancy which bothers me. The wires that connect to the gpu power input thing seem to lead directly to the hard-drive. Now is that possible or did some idiot technician do something stupid?
I dont have any extra ram lying around, don't think thats it anyway.
btw, the reference to Ender's Game is correct, but Demosthenes was an ancient Greek orator as well.
Thanks again.

It sounds like they use an after market GPU fan that utilizes the Hard Drive power cables to power them. This is perfectly okay and should not affect anything.

Have you contacted the manufacturer yet? Or is it one of those "As-is" type things?

Are you using a Soundblaster Live! card? If so, grab any updated drivers for it from their website. The driver supplied with Win XP is the basic driver and can cause problems. I ran into problems with my Live! card when I was using a GeForce2 in Win2k and that resolved the issue.

If still no luck try this:

1) Grab the latest 4in1 Hyperion drivers from VIA. (http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=2) Be sure to uninstall the old drivers first. (You will be given the option to remove old drivers during the new VIA install.)

2) Uninstall and reinstall your Radeon Drivers

Post back if still having probs

Dear MootLogic, although all three of your suggestions are very good, none of them worked. I really hope this problem is software based and there is nothing wrong with the hardware because ibuypower is a horrible company to deal with...
I installed the sound drivers and they made no difference, I installed the mobo drivers and that only disrupted my cable connection (I uninstalled and reinstalled the modem and that fixed it). Reinstalling the gpu drivers was the first thing I did, and as you mighthave gathered, it didn't work. I actually tried both the drivers from the provided CD and the new Catalyst 2.5 drivers from ATi's site.
One thing I may have forgotten to mention is that the first time I run a game it runs for about 3-4 minutes in-game before crashing. Everytime after that the game crashes almost immediatly after loading into the game and kicks me back to the desktop. Also, video files and scripted in-game sequences run much longer than actual gameplay. For instance, 3DMarks gets halfway through the first lobby demo (thats the 5th of 17) and then crashes, on the second try it doesn't even finish the first demo. Another example is music videos, it plays a few music videos and then crashes. I would give more examples but I'm sure your patience is wearing thin.
I doubt it has anything to do with cooling because even after turning the system off for 40 mins to let it cool, 3DMarks crashed in the middle of the first demo.
Again, thank you very much.

One last thing, the system has rebooted twice for no reason (once on my dad and just now on me).
Thanks again, if you cant figure it out, don't worry, I'll call tech support.

Another possibility is overheating causing instability after a few minutes (especially during 3d intensive games).

Are you using a full tower case or midi case ?, using case fans ?

Also ATI have released Catalyst v3.0 drivers (but this sounds like a hardware thing to me).

and if they dont work try the latest Omega Win XP Radeon drivers which fixed a few problems I had with v3.0 Catalyst drivers

Omega Radeon Drivers -
http://www.link-empire.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=53

Catalyst 3.0 Drivers - http://www.zdnet.it/zdnet/jumpNews.asp?idchannel=625&idUser=0&idNews=162689