Oh Tech Gurus

[Kevincheese]

Maybe someone here can help me figure out what is going on with my machine.

For the last couple weeks, since I moved all of my hardware into a new case, with all 3 of my harddrives together, I've been having some big issues with programs that like to stop working.

First, I started off with a fresh format, with Windows XP running on a 15 gig partition on my first harddrive (a brand new WD), with the rest of the drive being used for games.

First I start having problems with iTunes and Quicktime. They'd work after being installed, and after a couple restarts, but all of a sudden just *would not* open.

I reformatted, and it seemed like it cleared up, but a day later started doing the same shit. The weird thing is, a few days later, they started to WORK again.

Anyways, two days ago I got my new video card in the mail, so I decided to start fresh again. This time, with my copy of XP Home.

This time around, I installed the video card, and then booted up and reformatted. First thing I did was go for the Windows updates. SP1, SP2, and everything in between. Then on to all the other drivers I always install.

Anyways, later that day, after the appropriate reinstalls, BAM, Battlefield 2 won't run. It loads into the black screens, flickers a few times, and after about 30 seconds, closes onto the desktop. Deus Ex also stopped working after I played it a couple times. It's giving some error I've never seen before. Also, the program that ATI has to change the card's settings (AA, AF, etc) will not open. It just appears on the process list, then poof, gone.

Anyhow, I've run out of ideas about what could be causing this. I'm pretty certain I don't have any virus issues.

Anyhow, here's the list of everything I installed... maybe someone will see something that's a big red flag, heh.

ATI Catalyst Control Center, Control Panel, Decoder... Display drivers, Multimedia Center 9.03, Remote Wonder 2.5, GUIDE PLUS
Creative Mediasource + drivers for Audigy 2
Battlefield 2
DIVX + Player
Realtek AC'97 Audio (onboard sound) drivers
Sony Vegas 6.0 + Media Manager
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1, + Hotfix
Mozilla Firefox
Fraps, Winamp, Ventrilo, Trillian, Photoshop 7.0, Filezilla (can't imagine any of these would cause a problem)

My hardware is:

Gigabyte motherboard: 7VT600-RZ(-C)
Athlon 2700+
ATI x800 XT All in Wonder (brand spanking new)
1 WD 160 gig, 7200 rpm, 8 meg cache. 15 gig partition runs windows, the rest (116 in windows) I keep my games on.
1 Hitachi (same specs, data storage)
1 WD (same specs as first, data storage, remnants of another windows installation, had moved it from my other pc)
Creative Audigy 2 (WS? it's one of the less expensive ones)
2x 512 meg Kingston PC3200 ram
500 Watt power supply

Does anyone see anything here that could be a problem? The harddrive Windows is running on is brand new... that's the last thing I can think of that could be causing this.

The thing that gets me the most is the fact that my machine is running just fine otherwise. >_<

[Vorph]

Sounds like some bad hardware to me. Start by running memtest86+ v1.60 off a bootable cd since RAM is the easiest component to test.

If that doesn't show a problem, then you get to have fun trying to narrow it down to motherboard, video card (unlikely since you had problems before getting the new card), hard drive, etc. Don't assume that something is fine just because it's brand new, usually when hardware goes bad it's within the first few months.

Another thing, why are you loading both the onboard sound and the Audigy2? You should go into the bios and disable the AC97 chipset. I doubt that could cause your problem though.