I had read about a refresh rate fix for XP in another forum. I tried it and it works. This is without any third party software.
Nvidia cards.
Go to your vid driver inf. (for the 27.70s it's NVFS.inf)
Open it and scroll down to your particular card (i.e. I have a GeForce 3 so mine is NV20)
You will see all the refresh rates supported. The first line will be 640x480
You can set your own refresh rates here. I have mine set to a single refresh rate for each resolution I use. Here is an example of one of the lines.
HKR,, NV20_Modes, %REG_SZ_APPEND%, "8 1024 768 100 0"
That was after I changed it. Before I changed it, it was
HKR,, NV20_Modes, %REG_SZ_APPEND%, "8 1024 768 60 70 72 85 100 120 0"
Now do this for each resolution you have. There are three separate sections there, one for 8 bit (256 color), 16, and 32
Change the refresh rates in each one.
When you're done, save the changes. Now install the drivers again with the changed inf.
What this does it trick XP to thinking that is the default refresh rate so if XP tries to change it in any game it will use the new default (lowest) refresh rate that is there.
You will notice that now in the nvidia display properties that only the refresh rate(s) you set will show up in the monitor's refresh rate drop down box.
If you set only one refresh rate as I did for each resolution, you won't even have to set the refresh rates up, they will already be set.
Now you're good to go without any third party program having to do it.