Quig,
Have you tried the optimized drivers from
www.omegadrivers.net ? The latest Omega drivers for Radeon cards (2K/XP) is 2.5.51 based on the Catalyst 4.6 drivers from ATI. I have never had a "lockup" with either the ATI or the Omega drivers, so it may be something else. I am using XP Home Edition with the 9800 XT card, btw.
Here is a comment (from ATI) on the Omega website recognizing this guys work on optimizing their drivers...
(11/09/03)
The Omega Drivers have been recognized by ATI as the best moddeed drivers in the internet!!!
Here is a quote from Terry Makedon when he was interviewed by a German Magazine:
"ATI supports the enthusiast community wholly. Omega Drivers are in fact a good example of ATI’s user community at its best. What they are in principle are CATALYST drivers with different settings enabled via registry keys and other such methods. This provides users an alternative to ATI’s CATALYST default settings. While there are a few different modification drivers out in the community our relationship with the creator of the Omega Drivers is of the highest working standard. The author of these drivers is part of the CATALYST beta driver testing team, and also in direct contact with ATI. In fact we would go so far as to say that if a user chooses to go the mod driver route, they go with the Omega Drivers."
Check em out !