John,
I do have the most recent nvidia driver. As to the bios settings...I've
gotten in a couple of times and made some changes. When I saved and exited,
the machine rebooted and gave me a black screen and nothing more. I
actually ended up having to pull the battery and reseat it to get the bios
to reset to the defaults. I haven't figured that one out either!
Jim

"John Wunderlich" <jwunderlich@lycos.com> wrote in message
news:Xns99DB82A45F04Dwunderpsdrscray@138.126.254.2 10...
> "Jim Ludwig" <jimlud@sbcglobal.net> wrote in
> news:9QmWi.3786$Vx3.2021@nlpi069.nbdc.sbc.com:
>
>> Hi all,
>> I'm having trouble with dad's computer. I did a clean install of
>> winxp and it's still doing the same thing it was doing which
>> caused me to do a HD wipe. Every time he plays a game, the
>> computer shuts down and reboots. You can load a game (the ones
>> I've tried are Tron 2.0, Jedi Academy, and Flight Simulator), go
>> through all the initial setup, choose your options, and watch any
>> cut scenes or videos. However, when the actual "gameplay" starts
>> when you take control of your character/ship, the screen goes
>> blank and it reboots, just as if you hit the reset button. This
>> is not limited to games either. I have had the machine do the
>> same thing while on the internet. It seems like it was doing that
>> when I would download an Active X control or something like that.
>> Not really all downloads, just the "on the fly" kind of downloads
>> that you install while you're browsing. Any idea at all why this
>> computer is so unstable? My brother built the computer with all
>> various components. It is an AMD Sempron with 512 mb ram, an
>> nVidia mobo and the video card is an nVidia geforce 3 6200. He
>> built it about a year and a half ago and it has never worked
>> right. I am kind of suspecting there is a conflict between the
>> video card and the onboard built in video, but if so, I don't know
>> how to resolve this. Any help is greatly appreciated. Jim
>> jimlud@sbcglobal.net
>
> Have you gone to the nVidia site and downloaded the latest drivers for
> your video card? The latest driver package is dated Sep 27, 2007 and
> the major change incorporated was to make it compatible with several
> games.
>
> <http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_163.71.html>
>
> If you suspect an conflict with the internal video, then boot into the
> BIOS and check the settings. You might be able to disable the internal
> video from there.
>
> HTH,
> John