There appears to be a problem with the graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT) running on a newly built computer with the following specifications: Intel Quad Core Q8200 2.33 GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, with Windows XP Service Pack 3. Whenever I run a relatively recent game (such as Prince of Persia, Fallout 3, etc.), on the highest graphics settings, all of the games have a graphics-related crash. This either involves the screen being filled with incorrectly rendered textures, or crashing with a blue screen and a message saying that the drive is stuck within an infinite loop. I have tried reinstalling DirectX 9.0 together with the NVIDIA drivers, but this has not resolved the problem. Do you have any suggestions?

Such video and graphics card issues are quite difficult to diagnose and resolve, but there are some steps we can take to narrow down the issue, hopefully towards a solution. You mentioned that occasionally the computer has completely crashed with a blue screen and message about the graphics driver being stuck in an infinite loop. According to some articles which I read on the internet while researching your question, this can occur if the graphics driver is waiting for the graphics hardware to become idle. The technical reason for this problem is beyond the scope of this answer, but nevertheless there are a few generic solutions to this problem. First, you should try updating the drivers for your graphics card. Since you are using an NVIDIA card you should visit www.nvidia.com. On your first visit a splash page will appear asking you to select your region. At the time of writing there was no entry for Australia (or even Oceania) so just click “USA/Canada”. This will not create any issues, as we just want the drivers. On the main NVIDIA page, click the “Download Drivers” link in the menu bar. Select your product (GeForce 9 Series) together with your operating system and preferred language. You should be presented with the download for the latest GeForce family drivers. You can verify that these drivers are compatible with your graphics card by clicking the “Supported Products” tab on the download page and verify that your graphics card is listed. Once you are satisfied that this is the correct driver, click the “Download” button to proceed to the download. When the download has completed, run the downloaded driver package to install the latest GeForce graphics drivers on the computer. Once this has finished, restart the computer and then check whether the problem continues.

Should the problem continue then you should next consider running Windows Update to perform an update of any system files, which may include video files. Open Internet Explorer and then go to windowsupdate.microsoft.com. Follow the prompts to run Windows Update and scan your computer for any necessary updates. Once Windows Update has finished you may be required to restart your computer so that the updates can be installed. After the restart ensure that you visit Windows Update again, as often you will find that there are updates for the updates (especially if you have not updated Windows in a long time) and you need to revisit Windows Update to obtain these additional updates. The rule of thumb is to keep running Windows Update until there are no further updates to install, at which point the computer should be up-to-date.

Next, you could try reducing the graphics hardware acceleration in Windows. This is not a particularly good solution, as reducing the graphics hardware acceleration could have other (potentially adverse) effects on the systems graphic performance, but we should at least try this procedure in case it resolves the problem. Go to the “Start” menu > “Control Panel” and open the “Display” control panel (you may need to first select the “Appearance and Themes” category). In the Display Properties window that appears, click the “Settings” tab and the “Advanced” button. In the next window that appears, click the “Troubleshooting” tab. You will see a slider named “Hardware Acceleration”. At the moment this slider should be at the “full” end of the scale. If this is not the case for some reason, set the slider to “full” and then accept the changes and check whether the problem continues. However, in the more likely event that the slide is at “full”, move the slide down one notch, save the settings and then check whether the problem continues. If the problem does continue, repeat the procedure and move the slider down another notch. Keep repeating this procedure until either the slider reaches the “none” end of the scale, or you find a point on the scale when the problem does not occur. If you do find a point on the scale where the problem does not occur, then you can keep that setting. However, be wary that this may have other effects on Windows or programs which use graphics acceleration, so if you start to notice other problems then you may need to reset the slider to “full”. On the other hand, should you reach the “none” end of the scale, and the problem continues, then be sure to reset the slider to its original position at “full” before continuing with other procedures below.

At this point if the problem persists then I would normally recommend that you complete a reinstallation of Windows, in case something within the operating system has become corrupt. However, you mentioned that the system is newly built so it is unlikely that an operating system problem would be causing this issue. That said, there could still be merit in completing a fresh reinstallation of Windows to eliminate the operating system as a potential cause of this issue. Additionally, since this is a relatively new installation of Windows you should (hopefully) not have a large amount of data which needs to be backed-up before completing the reinstallation, so now may be the time to complete this procedure. However, as I have warned, make sure that you do backup all important data that you need to keep, since the format and reinstallation of Windows is a destructive process which will result in all data on your computer being lost.

Should the reinstallation of Windows not resolve the issue, then the last possibility is that there is something wrong or faulty with the graphics card, particularly because the problem appears to have been occurring ever since you built the computer not long ago. Alternatively, there could also be something wrong with your motherboard or the configuration on the motherboard (in the BIOS setup, the low-level configuration on the motherboard itself) which does not agree with your graphics card. In any case, these two potential causes are difficult to resolve and diagnose via correspondence, so in this situation I would suggest that you take the computer to a computer technician for review as they will be able to test with different components.