2D/3D graphics causing crashes

[Eiji]

I've had this problem for about a month now and I'm not much of a gamer but its annoying nevertheless.

Basically, any game I play or any application I use that utilises DirectX or even OpenGL crashes after a minute or two or freezes for a couple of second then unfreezes. Sometimes my system even restarts when this problem occurs.

It can't be the gfx card because I have tried 3 cards and all yield the same results. I don't want to reinstall WinXP either because I don't have the time to reinstall everything. Nothing is overclocked on my system either.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled DirectX 9.0c using DirectX Happy Uninstaller without any luck.

Running 3DMark03 crashes my system 95% of the time before completing all of the tests though the crashes and freezing are random throughout.

What could the problem be?

System specs:

Windows XP Professional
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz)
ASUS A7V333
400W WinPower PSU
512MB PC2700 DDR333
nVidia GeForce FX5200
40GB/120GB/200GB HD's
LiteOn 16x DVD-ROM
NEC-2510 DVD Writer

 

[Zedric]

I'm sure someone is going to say "power issue", so let's start with that. 400W is plenty enough for that system, provided it works. If it's crapping out it may cause freezing and stuff. But I'm leaning towards not being the PSU this time (you should check it though!).

A good idea would be to test your RAM using memtest: www.memtest.org

The three different cards you used, where they all FX5200s? I know there was a problem a while back with "AGP Fast Writes" needing to be turned off in BIOS. Shouldn't be that either, but may be worth looking at as well.

 

[Eiji]

The 3 cards were: nVidia FX5200, ATi Radeon 9600 Pro and a FX5700.

Also, if I manage to tab out of a crash and try to run a 3D based app again, I get D3D errors which only go away after restarting Windows XP.