My Rig: AMD 64 athlon x2 4400 2.4 Ghz Dual Core 4GB Corsair DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) EVGA nVidia 9800 GTX+ 450W Corsair psu nforce 430 mobo 350 GB SATA HD Vista Home Premium 32 I've run memtest86, all is well. Temperatures are right where they should be. It almost seems like a driver issue, but Ive downloaded all the most recent patches for the games and the most recent video card and mobo controllers, but no luck. It also did this prior to me upgrading from the integrated geforce 6100, 1GB ram, and 250W no-name psu. On a side note, the games Ive tried are COD 5, Assasins Creed, Oblivion, Fallout 3, C&C3, and Black & White 2. All crash religiously within 5-15 minutes, except B&W2 which at max settings and game version 1.0 us fairly stable [1-2 crashes to desktop an hour]. Dont know if that info helps. Thanks for any insights!

Here go to this site: http://www.systemrequirementslab.co... Pick a game you play (or want to play) on the drop down list, install the addon and all that, scroll down and press free driver update and go to the site and do the automatic driver search and search for the motherboard drivers and graphics drivers (do them one at a time after trying the mother board, restart when it asks, and then do the graphics driver) You will have to restart, (every time you restart, it might get stuck at a few screens, for a long time, (happened to me) thats okay don't turn off your comp. or anything, just wait) then go back to the same website (systemrequirementslab) and pick the same game and scroll down and click on the DirectX version update, (it might not say it if its already updated) you will have to restart. Once you restart, ( might take long:-( ) start windows update and there should be some updates about the Drivers or DirectX or NVIDIA or something new, update those, restart when it asks. (It still might take a long time to restart- lol) I have an Hp computer and I have Hp update that comes with it and it had to install some new driver stuff also, so if your computer has any other update services, start those just in case if it has to update it to, restart if needed. Go back to the same website, (system requirements labs) and scan that same game, let me know what failed and stuff and I will tell you what to do next. :)

Try a bios update, I had all sorts of problems with this machine, bsods, crashes etc until I updated the bios. Had no problems since. I got my update from my PC manufacturers website.

1st reply: The system requirements lab says I passed everything with flying colors. I didnt see anythung telling me to update except for video card, which I knew and it sent me to the site saying what I knew: that it was fully updated. 2nd reply: Im seeming to have some trouble fingering outn how to update the BIOS and back up my old BIOS. Any tips? I downloaded the update from my manufacturer (ACER) but I go to open WinFlash and it says "OnBoard BIOS Not award BIOS!" Any more help guys? Thanks a ton for your insights thus far!

Do you have Mcafee? That caused me lots of problems for games on Vista.

thanks for all your thoughts guys im not to tech savy so it might take some time but ill try all the fixes and get back to you on what worked. been looking online and it seems there are alot of programs out that auto fix registry, driver and direct x probs for windows and specifically vista ill see what effect they have to. running norton 360 and avast iternet security