I have a Celeron 500, Gigabyte motherboard, 64MB RAM, Acer 10X DVD-ROM drive, 13GB Seagate hard drive, Creative Vibra 128 PCI sound card and a Powercolor Sniper2 nVIDIA RIVA TNT2 M64 video card with 32MB video RAM and TV-out. Everything is new. Whenever I start up my FIFA 2000 CD-ROM soccer game, it loads OK but after a few seconds of game play it freezes, the sound “stutters” on the same note or syllable and the whole computer locks up. Alt-tab does not work and only the reset button regains control of the computer. I’ve tried everything: reinstalling the game, loading the latest Direct-X 7a drivers, even reinstalling Windows 98 (1st edition). Another slower CD-ROM drive gave the same result. I can’t find any reference to the problem on the Electronic Arts website or the Creative website. The only clue is that the game was stable when I tried using my old ESS 1868 ISA sound card. The sound was buzzy but at least the game ran. But after removing that sound card from Control Panel and then reinstalling the Creative card and game, the problem returned. Should I do another clean install of Windows? It is getting very tedious; it seems like a driver/sound card conflict to me. Can you suggest anything?

I think that you are correct in saying that something on your computer is conflicting with your soundcard. Does this problem occur if you are playing any other games? If it doesn’t, then it probably is a specific conflict between FIFA 2000 and your sound card. If this is the case, probably your best bet is to check out www.fifa2000.com and then look at the support area. If you still have no luck, you probably will have to contact Electronic Arts (the makers of FIFA 2000) about your problem. However, if it is a problem which you are encountering with all of your games, it is probably a specific conflict. Put the soundcard you are having trouble with back into your computer and then go to ‘Start’ menu > ‘Settings’ > ‘Control Panel’, and open the ‘System’ control panel. Click the ‘Device Manager’ tab and in the window that appears, expand ‘Sound, video and game controllers’. Find your soundcard here and double click on it. In the window that appears, click the ‘Resources’ tab and you will see a box ‘Conflicting device list:’ at the bottom. This will display any conflicts your soundcard is having. If you are having conflicts (even if there are no conflicts displayed in the ‘Conflicting Device List’) then I suggest you consult the Windows Hardware Conflict Troubleshooter. This can be accessed by going to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Help’. In the window that appears, click the ‘Contents’ tab, expand ‘Troubleshooters’, expand ‘Windows 98 Troubleshooters’, and then click ‘Hardware Conflict’.