Shadow64Bt

Hate to say it bud, but I think your GF6600 is cooked. Done. Dead. It's possible, judging from the amount of people having problems with GF6600s, that you recieved the card DOA. Take it back, tell 'em your problems, and ask for an exchange. If they don't let you exchange it, send it back to Aopen as an RMA. Also, the GF6600 requires a direct connection to your PSU, you did plug it in, right? (just checking, have to cover all the basics) Normally though, the card will work still without the plug, it'll just tell you at startup of Windows that you need to plug it in. Anyways, hope this helps a little, good luck.

I would hazard a guess that your mobo hates running in 2x/4x AGP mode, since it's an Abit board, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case, they are pretty picky. So, your only option may be to bite the bullet and buy a new video card.

Check your BIOS for the setting "AGP Aperture Size" and either increase or decrease it to 128Mb (you can use higher, but it's not recommended, too much of a good thing can be bad). It sounds and looks to me like your AGP BUS is sending more texture data than can actually be held by the physical RAM, increasing the Aperture allows it to store more data, and more textures. Give it a try, if that's not the problem, try a variation of ScinteX's suggestion, lower the AGP BUS down to 4X, don't ask it to, force it. If you're not comfortable in your BIOS, make sure you touch nothing else in it other than these options, and cranking voltage normally doesn't solve texture loss, it will however, help with preventing overheating, and effectively void your warranty

lol for 64-bit Athlons, ignore the clockspeed, and even, in some cases, ignore the internal cache, focus on it's Hyper-Transport speed, some are 533MHz (s754) some are 1000MHz (3000+ s939), and others are 1600Mhz (3200+-3500+ s939) and the biggies are 2000MHz (3600+ s939 and up). That is one of the real factors for speed, also, even a simple s939 Athlon 64 3000+ will destroy a P4 in terms of speed. For motherboards, I run an A8V Deluxe myself, beautiful board, and the DFI boards (if you can find the rare one with an AGP slot) are no slouches either. Abit has been shaky lately though, and stay away from MSI, Gigabyte, and the other smaller companies. They are evil . *Fried RAM nightmare w/ MSI K7M*

I'm not sure if there is a tool out there for testing the North and South chipsets, but I wouldn't be surprised if a program like SiSoft's SANDRA would be able to tell you if they are working properly or not. I will look into it for you. Just had a power outage here yesterday and I've now lost control of my USB ports :S so I'm also working on that too. Far too many problems these days.

If you recieved a driver disc with your motherboard, use it now. Your computer seems to have either A) lost it's drivers completely, or it hates you. Also, if you feel comfortable enough, go into your BIOS again, and look for an option that should read something similar to "Onboard Audio Controller" and set it to the disabled option for now, sometimes onboard devices take an IRQ that is needed for a more important piece of hardware.

Sorry to say, but I think your only choice is to use nVidia's ForceWare drivers now. (www.nvidia.com) But don't worry too much, they're stable, and full-featured.

Well, that's a new one to me. You say it's running of the secondary for the card? Are you using the TV-out? A flat panel? Try reinstalling the drivers as well.

Hmmm. I've had similar problems, and they've almost always stemmed from the AGP Bus becoming overloaded far too easily. I agree with AndyFair, send the results of the BSOD, and, open up the case again and look for the motherboard manufacturer and model number, should be right out in plain view.

First off, need more info. What type/make/model of motherboard and CPU are you using? Be specific. It sounds like an AGP BUS overflow to me, I get that often with boards using a VIA chipset. I will check back later.

Sounds like someone has a cooked CPU-to-PCI/AGP bridge. If that is the case, looking for a new motherboard is probably your only option. I have had experience with electrical storms, and they are not pretty. I lost a modem, a video card, and two sticks of ram to one. Not a happy day. Also, move your computer to another outlet, and use a different power bar. (You ARE using a power bar, right? no offence meant, just covering every angle) It could be something as simple as a blown ground, which would cause your computer to run on dirty power. In short though, it could litterally be anything, which is why I hate computers. And yet, I still work with 'em all the time. Odd, eh? Good luck.

A note on your system specs, you say you're using 512Mb Xeon DDR400? As in the high latency Xeon RAM meant for constant operation? That could be your speed problem right there, as the server RAM used by Xeon CPUs is extremely slow compared to regular DDR, and (if you're using 2x256Mb sticks) it must, like RDRAM and Dual Channel DDR, be installed in matching pairs. Just a thought. Also, they are right about HT not working for Win98se, since it's no longer supported, also, Win98se will recognize a dual-CPU config, but only after a ton of updates and tweaking. But wait! There's MORE! On a system running XP, even if you're dual-booting with win98, there is still no true DOS mode, which is why you will have a difficult time with DOS-based programs, at least, that was the case in my experience. And, here's where you're not going to like me much , almost all new hardware, yes, including motherboards, will NOT work with Win98, especially since any drivers written are expressly for XP, and it's very rare that any good third-party drivers are out. This is especially true when it comes to Intel boards. That's my 10 cents, since I'm Canadian, and the US currency is still worth more . -Also, Intel is the devil, AMD will rule the world.