EciDemon

Those drivers are leaked, So you are really not suposed to use them. If you do, you do it on your own risk. I _think_ you can fix the Ff8 problem with RivaTuner, Install it and dissable 8bit palettized textures under Dx7 applications. Im alittle un sure about the fix as it was some time a go I red about it. But I know it was something along those lines.

I got the same problem after activating Advance powermanagement support as it sayd it would work on my computer. I think one needs to change something in the Bios to make it Shut down automaticly. I havent checked my settings yet, but I will soon

I experienced simalar slow downs in Win2k before. Games worked fine then all of a sudden it locked up for a few seconds then back to normal again. I have not seen this behaviour in WinXP yet. I never figuerd out what caused the slow downs in Win2k

Before you play you could test to turn off some of the WinXP gui enhancements such as the skin. If it dosent help the overall frame rates it atleast makes Alt-Tab faster as the Desktop takes less time to re-draw.

You guys seems to have played one to many 3d games. D2 is an old facion 2d game and it can never exceed 25 fps even if it say it does. So as long as you get 25 fps the game runns in optimal speed and no Frame skip will occur. Also. D2 runnd very bad in D3d mode, its just not optimized for D3d. With a 3dfx card how ever it runns great. There is Nothing you can do about the bad fps in D3d mode other than ask Blizzard to make a patch or something. Latest Direct x and drivers might help alittle.