I am still in the process of going through some of these threads so I apologize if this has already been discussed. When my system first boots up, the monitor goes black for about a second or two and then kicks on to the desktop, then there are times when I click on the start button and nothing comes up unless I run my mouse over where the icons should be. Then they would appear. Also, when I get online, the system will sometimes crash and restart. This restart also occurs while I am trying to load Splinter Cell 2 and Hitman 2. I have the latest drivers for all items and I have the latest Direct X.

Here are my system settings:
Gigabyte mobo ( GA-7S748 ) ...I believe
Sound Blaster LS
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra
512MB DDR400 SDRAM

My system seems stable otherwise. To me, this seems like the video driver is doing something to the Kernel and causing Windows to crash. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Does it crash with an error or just restart?

__________________
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

no error message....just restarts.

Ok I would say that you would want to check your power supply sounds like it going bad.

__________________
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

I just bought my geforce fx 5700 ultra and put it in yesterday. Gameplay has been great on Counter-Strike v1.6. When i went to go play Battlefield: Vietnam, i was really diapointed. When i moved around, pieces of the landscape along with all other characters would sometimes turn black for a quick second then go back to its normal look. It does it all the time. It also does the same thing for Call of Duty and Call of Duty Multiplayer. I really cant explain exactly what it looks like but it seems that all my DirectX 9 games have this problem. Do you think my card is defective? I have the latest drivers and here are my system specs. Please Help.

IntelP4 2.8ghz Hyper Threading
512 mb of RAM
40 gb harddrive
nVidia Geforce FX 5700 ULtra 128mb
ASUS P4S800D motherboard.

yeah this has been happening to me recently, and at first i thought someone had hacked into my computer. but it turns out that the power in my house goes out for a split second frequently...

__________________
spasms!!!

so you dont think it is my card? i mean the power doesnt ever short out in our house. I mean if it was the power it would happen on all my games right? Im just hoping its not my card.

PCXGamer:

I have a 400W PS in there; do you think that is not enough for the computer? This is always something I am torn on. On one hand, the whole computer should not use that much power to need a bigger power supply but on the other, the video card requires a power source on it.

I have another PS I can try to see if that will make any difference but the way it acts when I click the start button seems very strange. There is nothing there on the desktop until I run my mouse over that area and then the icons in the start menu appear.

I will give your suggestion a try; I appreciate the help and if you can think of anything else, let me know. thanks again.

ok with the start button try this right click on the blue bar at the bottom of the screen not the start button but the blue bar beside the start button then go to properties the properties windows should pop up near the top will be an option that says Auto-hide the taskbar if it's checked uncheck it and the click apply and then ok. That should take care of the start button. Now with the power supply it not that the 400W isn't enough power I think the power supply is bad that it's not working right. A 400W is more than enough to run your PC if you have a other one that will run the pc then I think you should try that one and see if it helps you.

__________________
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

If your card will let you check the temperature you may want to look at this game that give you graphical problem is normally one of two problems. First the game itself is the problem and you need to check for patches or two the video card is over heating.

__________________
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.