After installing a Hercules Prophet 9000 64 MB PCI graphics card the computer locks up frequently, especially when playing Descent 3 (even after installing the latest drivers). In order to restart I have to manually turn the computer off, using the on/off button. When installing the Hercules Prophet, I disabled the onboard card via the BIOS and installed the card according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The computer is an IBM 733 Pentium III with 256MB RAM running Windows ME. The motherboard has an onboard SIS graphics chip. Would installing Windows XP help the problem?

If you have a copy of Windows XP then I guess there would be no harm in installing it (unless the video card does not support Windows XP). In fact, you may find that the card works better under Windows XP. If you do install Windows XP, be sure to download the Window XP drivers from us.hercules.com (as there are a set of drivers for Windows 9X/ME and a different set for Windows 2000/XP). Assuming that you either don’t install Windows XP or installing it doesn’t solve the problem, we will need to find some alternatives. Unfortunately this type of problem is always hard to solve. One standard solution for these problems is to decrease the hardware acceleration for the video card. To do this, go to the ‘Control Panel’ and open ‘System’. In the System Properties window, click the ‘Performance’ tab. At the bottom of the window click the ‘Graphics’¦’ button. Take note of the current setting of the slider and decrease this by one notch. Click OK. You may need to restart the computer. If this does not fix the problem, keep on decreasing the slider by one notch until either the problem is fixed or you reach the lowest setting (and the problem persists). In the latter case, once you have reached the lowest setting (and it doesn’t fix the problem) you should reset the slider to its original value. If you reach this point please let me know and I will keep my ear to the ground for you. Maybe some other readers would have some suggestions for you? If so, please write in.