I have a computer here that is running Windows XP, and had been doing fine without any major problems for about a year. All of the installed drivers came from either the Windows XP CD or Windows update page. Then about a month ago the computer started acting up it would freeze, not boot up, and have total system crashes constantly. After a crash when I went to boot it up I would get an error report that attributed the problems to a video card driver, so I went around finding and installing updated drivers with no luck. I decided to just format the drive and reinstalling the same copy of XP with the drivers that had work before. But the reinstall still did not fix any problems even after once again getting the updated drivers. At this point the computer is unusable except within safe mode which it has no problems running. I would greatly appreciate if anybody could give me any help in finding a possible solution. Do you believe that it is a driver problem or a problem with the hardware inside?

If your computer runs for long times without problems in safe mode, it is probably not overheating, RAM, or other hardware problems. You will have to trouble shoot your system to find the bad driver(s) that may be interacting. Boot up WinXP, normally and from start, run, enter msconfig, and go to startup. Uncheck half your start up items, click OK, and restart. If you have no problems, one of the start up items you have unselected is the culprit, otherwise it is one of the remaining items. Continue unselcting items by about half, until you have narrowed the culprit, and then do one or two at a time with rebooting and testing. You can also unselect all and add one at a time to find the offending program/driver but this will take much longer, of course. I am assuming at this point that you have properly installed updated video drivers for your card. Let us know how you do.

Thanks for the reply; I tried what you suggested, however the computer still froze the second I tried to do anything. I really don’t understand how after formatting and reinstalling the operating system and the drivers that I know worked great for a year, could I still have this problem. The only guess I have is that it has something to do with a hardware issue, and I don’t know much about fixing those types of problems. I guess I’m going to have to take it into a repair shop, even though I don’t want to because those guys charge a bundle. Thanks for the help