XP crashes with Nvidia

[Guest]

I am using an Athlon XP 1800+ with 256 megs of DDR Ram and have a Nvidia 440 MX. While running Windows XP Professional and Win9x i have this trouble that whenever i play games (2D/3D) the system reboots however when i am watching a movie it doesnt. I suspected a virus and updating my sys with the latest definitions i scanned it but to no avail
Is there some incompatibility issue in Nvidia and Athlon...(well it was running good for an year and then all hell broke lose)...,is it a corrupt windows installation or is there something wrong with my power supply or lastly is it something i dont know about

Do let me know coz i am really annoyed.

 

[Rob Schneider]

I don't have a solution, other than to say I see same problem with
Nvidia on an Athlon machine. Problems on my machine come and go (I
suspect this because the apps themselves are doing something different).

Go to Nvidia's web site and try getting drivers. Try different
versions. Perhaps newest isn't necessarily better.

I recommend you not us Nvidia driver provided by Microsoft's update
service. For me that killed the video.

Hope this is useful to you. Let us know.

rms

 

[Guest]

I have the same setup you do and play a lot of games also, but have never had any problems. Are you sure that card is dx9 compliant? Mine isn't MX so I think its got a better chipset and is probably newer. I assume you've updated all your drivers? I think I might have had that problem, but updating my drivers fixed it easily.

 

[Malke]

I am using an Athlon XP 1800+ with 256 megs of DDR Ram and have a
Nvidia 440 MX. While running Windows XP Professional and Win9x i have
this trouble that whenever i play games (2D/3D) the system reboots
however when i am watching a movie it doesnt. I suspected a virus and
updating my sys with the latest definitions i scanned it but to no
avail. Is there some incompatibility issue in Nvidia and
Athlon...(well it was running good for an year and then all hell broke
lose)...,is it a corrupt windows installation or is there something
wrong with my power supply or lastly is it something i dont know
about.

Do let me know coz i am really annoyed.

I've only used Nvidia cards and Athlons on the Windows gaming machines,
so the combination isn't an issue. Rather, I'd look to overheating,
RAM, running too many progams while gaming, or other factors instead.
Additionally, the card you have isn't a high-end gaming card, so
perhaps you are asking more of it than it can deliver. Try turning off
some of the eye-candy and special effects in the games you are playing.
Here are some tips about playing games:

1) Be sure you have a fast processor with plenty of RAM - at least
256MB but 512MB is better. 2)Test the RAM with Memtest86 if your
computer is randomly freezing. 3)Be sure you have updated video drivers
and that your video card is adequate for 3D gameplay. 4) Be sure you
have applied the latest patches for the game - get them from the game's
website or a place like FilePlanet. 5) If you continue to have problems
with one specific game (as opposed to all games), see if there are user
forums where you can post for help. 6) When you play a
processor-intensive game, don't have other applications running in the
background - keep extraneous programs/services to a minimum.

HTH,

Malke