Recently I upgraded my video card to a GeForce 2 MX200 so that I may play games which I have not been able to previously play. However, while playing games, such as AvP2 and Unreal Tournament, after a random period of time the computer freezes and the only way to make it work is to reboot. This also happens while attempting other CPU intensive tasks on the computer. I have tried downloading the latest drivers for my graphics card and for my motherboard but nothing seems to work. Could you please help me resolve this problem?

Unfortunately problems which seem to be related to graphics cards such as random computer freezes, are normally quite time intensive to diagnose and fix, as there are many possible causes of this problem. However, I will try and cover the most common causes of the problem and the associated fix. Firstly, let’s try decreasing the graphics acceleration in Windows. Go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Settings’ > ‘Control Panel’ and open the ‘System’ control panel. In the window that appears, click the ‘Performance’ tab and then the ‘Graphics’ button. Note the current setting for graphics acceleration. Then move this slider down one notch, click OK to save and exit the settings, and restart your computer. If the problem persists, move the slider down another notch. Keep on repeating this procedure until either the computer stops freezing or the slider reaches zero. If the slider reaches zero and the problem persists, move the slider back to its original setting. If you do reach this point another option to try is to ensure that there are no conflicts with your video card and that it has its own IRQ setting. Sometimes different hardware share IRQs (Interrupt Request Channels) which are used for communicating signal information between the computer and hardware. To check this, go back into the ‘System’ control panel and click the ‘Device Manager’ tab. In the tree of devices, locate your video card, right-click on that, and select ‘Properties’ from the context menu. In the window that appears, click the ‘Resource’ tab and check to see if there are any conflicts. If there is an IRQ conflict, check which device it is with. Normally, IRQ conflicts can be resolved by changing the slot in which your video card is installed (e.g., if your video card is installed in a PCI slot in the computer, you could try swapping it to another). However, if your video card is in an AGP slot you probably cannot move the card (as there is normally only one AGP slot in any one computer). In this case, the device manager should provide instructions on how to resolve the issue. If you are still having problems, please write back again.