this problem has been plagueing me for a while, but it came to a head yesterday, so here i am i iwll now explain my problem

when i try loading certain games (so far age of empires 2 + expansion, red alert 2 + expansion, and possibly battlefield vietnam) they get so far and then just freeze up causing me to have to reset my entire system, i first noticed a while ago when i tried playing aoe2 the conquerors and it crashed so i thought ok maybe its jsut the conquerors so i tried basic aoe2 and it got past the intro movies and i thought "wicked it seems to be wor..." then it did the same again, also when battlefield vietnam first came out i played it and it worked fine that for some reason the 2nd time i tried loading it up to play it gets as far as the menu then during map loading it just crashes resulting in me having to reset my system, then last night me and a friend decided to have a old time gaming session with red alert 2 and yuris revenge (all these games aoe2, ra2, bfv have all worked before on xp on my pc before) and it got to the menu screen etc but when i tried loading a game it crashed and i had to reset.. well you get the picture

anyway i guess this thread is kinda the same thing im experiencing and i have had all those games work before on this computer

heres my comp stats

comp

80gig & 60 gig maxtor 7200 rpm hard drives
geforce fx 5600 256meg ddr graphics card
gigabyte via KT333 ATX motherboard
soundblaster PCI512 sound card
768meg ddr ram
1.47GHz amd athlon xp processor
pinnacle conextant PCTV Rave tvcapture card
realtek RTL8139 100mbps NIC

Software

Windows XP - 5.01.2600
Via 4in1 - 5.1.0.3442
detonators - 5.6.6.4
Creative soundblaster pci512 - 3509.1.0.0

cant think of anything else you might need to know but if there is just ask, and hopefully my problem can be sorted (along with a few others who have this)

seems like the same problem i got after switching my graphics card. haven't been messing around with that have you? if so, it might be loose.. was with me at least! hehehe.

nope its fastened in nice n tight there, i think it may be driver related but im not sure as a friend of mine (the one i game with all the time) has virtually the identical set up as me (which i know in computer land doesnt mean squat) and his works for aoe2 and ra2, but he had the same problem with bfv as i do, until he bought the original when it came out in england which i have ordered lst night and his bfv works now so hoping mine will follow suit, but im still stuck with the others

a shot in the dark but ehm.....


Read some weeks ago that your motherboard might have trouble keeping up with your Nvidia ....

Do you have your set at agp 8x ?

Try for experiment , set back to 4x......

Just a shot........

yeah my agp is set to 8x ill try 4x but ive played aoe2 and ra2 on this machine set at 8x, hmm its all very odd indeedy, the only thing i can think of is maybe its some new driver issue, but ill try the 4x agp thing anyway just incase

My guess is driver related.. ViA and Creative doesn't play nice together either...

Had my share of via problems with the KT333 chipset (Asus A7V333), pci latency problems, VIA's piece-of-shit-4-in-1 drivers, stability problems with more than one memory stick etc...

And remember, latest isn't the greatest when it comes to via's 4-in-1 drivers. KT333 is quite old, so you might be better of with an older version.

Edit: In case it's Creative drivers screwing up, reduce hardware acceleration for audio in the control panel.