All Games Crash...need help!!!

Sorry for the long post, but I'm really frustrated and want to provide
all relevant information in the hopes that one of you can help me.

Just about every game I try to run crashes from the get go, even at the
splash screen. The crash behavior seems somewhat inconsistent.
Sometimes the system freezes with the sound stuttering. Sometimes the
monitor goes into power save mode, meaning it lost the signal from the
video card. One time, the computer spontaneously shut down. Behaviors
on test games are as follows (I don't want to try more until I resolve
this issue):

Myst V: Can only play in default resolution. Changing the resolution
causes it to freeze, then the game won't start again after a reboot.

Warcraft 3: Random behavior. Sometimes it freezes at the splash screen
or the opening cinematic. Sometimes it gets to the menu and when I try
to start the prologue, it plays the movie, then crashes. Sometimes, it
crashes right away.

Oni: Tried an old game to see what it behavior would be. I played the
Bungie cinematic, played the opening cinematic, then crashed, but with
a popup that said "Blamo! Oni crashed" or something like that, and then
it goes back to the desktop. This is the most friendly of them.

F.E.A.R.: Almost seems on the virge of crashing the whole time, so much
stuttering, then it finally does crash at the menu, if it even gets
there.

Civilization IV: Can get to the main menu, but menu items are
invisible, and the game crashes when I select something.

I can try some others later, like Baldur's Gate (see how well 2D
works). My specs are as follows:
Pentium IV 3.0 GHz (Prescott)
Asus P4P800 Motherboard (Intel 865 chipset)
Leadtek Winfast A380 (GeForce FX 5950)
Creative Labs Soundblaster Audigy Gamer
1 GB Kingston RAM (in 2 512 MB DIMMs)
Vantec Stealth PSU (520 W, I believe)
Western Digital Caviar 120 GB hard drive (Primary IDE Master) w/ 3
partitions
Seagate 200 GB hard drive (Primary IDE Slave)
Toshiba DVD-ROM Drive (Secondary IDE Master)
Toshiba DVD+RW (Secondary IDE Slave)
NEC MultiSync FE950+ Monitor (I know that probably doesn't matter, but
just in case)
No USB devices are permanently attached.

Side notes: CPU temp can get to about 50-52C when running Folding@home.
Current GPU temp is 49-50C, with the ambient temp at 46C. This computer
has always run a little hot, but it seemed to behave okay when I built
it. And I know that while these temps are a tad high, they should be
well below the threshold of causing problems. So I'm not really
convinced that it's a heat issue. I've checked the the video card is
seated properly and the molex plug is connected correctly. All drivers
are up-to-date, and I'm using the latest Nvidia drivers ( 81.98 ). I
think I should also add that everything else on my computer is working
fine. I can play movies in Quicktime and Media Player/Media Player
Classic (ACE Mega Codec pack installed), play mp3s in winamp and
iTunes, use Firefox and Outlook, have ZoneAlarm and AVG Free running in
the background, Folding@home, etc. It seems to be the really big stuff
(games) that is causing the problem. And the nv4_disp.dll error is not
the first time I've seen it. Could it be a video driver/card issue?
I've managed to make the system blue screen with the current problem
and it says the culprit is nv4_disp.dll, which I know to be the Nvidia
driver (right?). It complains that it was stuck in an infinite loop.
The following is an error log from one of the crashes (the crash don't
always generate these logs):

//
// Watchdog Event Log File
//

LogType: Watchdog
Created: 2005-12-28 19:16:19
TimeZone: 480 - Pacific Standard Time
WindowsVersion: XP
EventType: 0xEA - Thread Stuck in Device Driver

//
// The driver for the display device got stuck in an infinite loop.
This
// usually indicates a problem with the device itself or with the
device
// driver programming the hardware incorrectly. Please check with your
// display device vendor for any driver updates.
//

EaRecovery: 1
ShutdownCount: 54
Shutdown: 0
EventCount: 6
BreakCount: 6
BugcheckTriggered: 1
DebuggerNotPresent: 1
DriverName: nv4_disp
EventFlag: 1
DeviceClass: Display
DeviceDescription: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra
HardwareID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0333&SUBSYS_2978107D&REV_A1
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
DriverFixedFileInfo: FEEF04BD 00010000 0006000E 000A2006 0006000E
000A2006 0000003F 00000008 00040004 00000003 00000004 00000000 00000000

DriverCompanyName: NVIDIA Corporation
DriverFileDescription: NVIDIA Compatible Windows 2000 Display driver,
Version 81.98
DriverFileVersion: 6.14.10.8198
DriverInternalName: nv4_disp.dll
DriverLegalCopyright: (C) NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved.
DriverOriginalFilename: nv4_disp.dll
DriverProductName: NVIDIA Compatible Windows 2000 Display driver,
Version 81.98
DriverProductVersion: 6.14.10.8198

I also checked the device manager, and there were a few "Other Devices"
with yellow question marks next to them. I didn't think much of it
because one was the onboard SoundMax audio, which I don't use, another
was the USB Controller which still worked fine, and the other was the
SM Bus Controller. I've since installed the correct drivers for all
these (SoundMax and USB Controller from the motherboard CD, SM Bus
Controller from the drivers available on the Intel website), and this
seems to have made the problem worse. Now Warcraft 3 crashes
immediately on start.

I have determined that the RAM is fine. I've tried removing one DIMM,
and the problem seemed to get better, althought it was not fixed (this
was after installing the correct drivers, as described in the previous
paragraph). Warcraft 3 would actually start and I could play from about
30 seconds before the system crashed again. Oni still has the same
problem. F.E.A.R. starts very slowly, then when I try to run the
demo/system test, it gets a few frames in and crashes as well. The only
thing that works is Serious Sam, but it also looks like crap (I'm not
sure if it's supposed to look that way or not; it kind looks like it's
barely a step above Quake). Other programs like Civ3 work just fine
with no problems. I then removed the DIMM and put the other one in, and
this behavior has persisted.

Numerous times on these crashes, the monitor has gone into power save
mode. Correct me if I'm wrong, but power save is usually caused by the
monitor losing the signal from the video card, which can be cause by
the card powering down, correct?

Anyway, the system had been configured to run in dual-channel memory
mode, and it's now running in single-channel as I haven't put the other
DIMM back in. There are four DIMM slots, and I'm still running the
memory off the first slot. My next test is to see if changing slots
will help.

I've purchased a new video card to see if that could also be the
problem, as I don't think the problem is the memory at this point. I
purchased a PNY Verto GeForce 6600GT AGP 8X. I have not yet opened it,
and if the problem is not the video card, I want to return it. The
system has shut itself down on these crashes a couple of times, which
to me seems like something that could only occur with the motherboard.
Is it possible something might be wrong with the motherboard (which
would be a pain to swap out), especially since the problem seemed to
actually get worse when I installed the correct drivers?

Please help. I'm getting extremely frustrated at having all these great
games and not being able to play them. I've already tried a clean
reinstall of WinXP Professional (currently at SP1a; was still causing
the same problems with SP2 before). I can do a DxDiag dump if that
helps. The system has hung on doing the DxDiag tests before
(particularly the full screen test of DirectDraw), but it seems to pass
them now.

.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: All Games Crash...need help!!!
    ... >and it says the culprit is nv4_disp.dll, which I know to be the Nvidia ... 0xEA - Thread Stuck in Device Driver ... Now Warcraft 3 crashes ... >monitor losing the signal from the video card, ...
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