I was using an Asus GF3Ti500 with WinXP Pro.
Kept locking up and the event viewer would always (from memory) display something along the lines of.
The Asus WDM driver ( AVWDM i think ) cannot start which kinda stopped any vid input activity.
At hard locks the event displayed at the lock up was always relating to an Nvidia file.
NV4 something and always the same file, tried earlier revision drivers same problem.
However after running 3dmark from cold with 20 repetitions and it locking with the same message i tried an old TNT 1 card no further problems.
My Asus had the temp monitor program running and was not overclocked and heat was not a problem according to the temp readout, however its pretty obvious it IS a heat build up related problem with the card as it takes a long time before it fails.
After looking into the warranty side of it and finding that it has a 3 year warranty which is worthless, due to the fact the seller only gives a 12 month wty even tho Asus has it stamped in huge letters across the original packaging a 3 year wty.
According to trading standards the seller is not even obligated to give a years wty let alone 3 years you can imagine my dismay at finding the card was 1 year and 3 days old.
You dont even want to know my opinion of Asus video cards at the moment.
Reluctantly purchased an MSI GF4Ti4200 back up to speed and problem sorted.
Or so i thought until i had another lock up after approx 1.5 hours, when the event manager displayed this,
19/11/2002 21:36:51 WinMgmt Warning None 63 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM A provider, OffProv, has been registered in the WMI namespace, Root\MSAPPS, to use the LocalSystem account. This account is privileged and the provider may cause a security violation if it does not correctly impersonate user requests.
Now i use my comp for online banks etc and a firewall is and always will be up and running without fail checking incoming and outgoing.
I even sit behind a router but that firewall is being relaxed for nothing not even WinXP Pro.
After reading that report WinXP has gone i dont care how insecure MS is about there operating systems if i cant lock it
down to suit my purposes then its not for me, and if something i personally have not activated wants access i get nervous.
Back on Win98SE and enjoying the stability, point of this really is as San says check the event viewer it helps a lot sorting these issues.
Pity I liked XP as well.
