thanks all of you...i have been having a terrible time getting my herc tnt to work in win2k pro as well. like a dumbass, i didn't check the "pnp os.." setting either.
i forgot about disabling it when i installed freeBSD a few months ago. damn that smarts!
when i went back and switched it to "enabled" and rebooted...it works like a dream with nvidia reference drivers. my next challenge is to get the overclockign/advanced features enabled with the ref. drivers.