Hello everyone!

I've been having problems with my comp for the last 2 weeks..
After a Bios flash failed, I bought myself a new PCI-E motherboard and a graphic card to go with it.
Since then, I had nothing but trouble. I reinstalled Windows XP Pro a few times and each time had problems with very long loading times and such (which I finally found was because of the nforce 4 IDE drivers).
Now I can load XP correctly, and it's pretty stable as long as I don't run a game or a benchmark.
But, when I launch Guild Wars for instance, the game crashes after between 10 seconds and a minute or 2. It even crashes if I leave the game idle in the menu just after launching the game. It crashes wether the game is in background or the active window (Full screen or in a window doesn't change anything).
I was able to play Prince of Persia - The Two Thrones tho, it only crashes every hour or so (same type of crash, image freezes, and sound loops or screeches).
Need for Speed Most Wanted didn't seem to crash at all (tho I only tried for about 2 hours)
3DMark 2003 seems to crash mostly during Game Test 3 (Troll's Lair) or any CPU tests.
3DMark 2001 crashes during CPU tests too.
3DMark 2005 crashes during Game Test 2 (not always tho) or CPU Tests (always).
I also crashed once during a HD video playback (Quicktime 7 trailer 720p), but that was the only time.

Sometimes (rarely tho), after I had such crashes, when I reset, I hear 5 short beeps and then a few seconds later a normal beep but no video. I can reset as many times as I can after that, it beeps normally but no video. The only way to boot normally is to turn off my computer completely and turn it back on.

Ok, now here's what I've done so far :
I've trying removing my IDE disks and DVDs (I have windows and games on my SATA), my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 (+ drivers) and my network card, disabled everything I could on the motherboard, and it still crashes.
Increasing the memory voltage to 2.70v, or graphic card voltages doesn't seem to change anything.
I already exchanged my X1800 XL, but that wasn't the problem.
Memtest86 didn't find any problems after running for 10 hours, Prime95 and different burn in tests didn't crash at all.
I tried installing video drivers from 5.6 to 5.12, nforce4 drivers 6.66 and 6.70 (only SM Bus and ethernet without the firewall).
I tried a few different drivers for my Audigy 2 (but since it still crashes when I remove it and remove all drivers, I doubt that's the problem).
My memory timings are now 3-3-3-8 (very conservative), I didn't overclock anything from the start, disabled PEG Link mode and PEG Root in Bios (tried with them on as well).
The voltages on my PSU are good, the CPU is about 40 to 45° during load, GPU goes to around 62-65° during load (seems pretty normal).
Of course this is a fresh Windows install (reinstalled about 10 times to find out the different problems).
I'm thinking of trying with Windows XP 64 but I don't want to run into compatibility problems afterwards...

I hope I'm not forgetting anything.. if I am, I'll post it.

Thanks in advance for your help, I'm running out of ideas

Here are my specs :

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Newcastle)
Asus K8N4-E Deluxe (Nforce 4-4x socket 754, PCI Express)
HIS ATI Radeon X1800 XL 256Mb
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
1Gb Corsair XMS 400Mhz
PSU : Antec TruePower 2 TrueControl 2 550W
Maxtor 300Gb SATA Diamondmax 10
Western Digital 120Gb 7200
Western Digital 200Gb 7200

If you need anymore info, please tell me so.

Mithrandir

Did you install the SATA drivers during the XP setup (F6)?

Did you install XP SP2?

Did this graphics card ever work OK?

I installed XP with SP2 integrated, so I didn't need to install the SATA drivers (tho I tried at first, but I later found out the nforce 4 SATA drivers were causing the big problems I had then after each installation (Windows taking 5 minutes to boot, random crashes and reboots, and after a few hours, windows getting corrupted and not booting at all).
I bought the graphic card at the same time as the motherboard, so nope, I never could use it correctly.
I did bring the graphic card back to the store where I bought it though, and they gave me a new one... but the problem is still there.

Just checking Your board has both SATA & SATA-RAID connectors: are you plugged into the SATA?

Also: look in your Event viewer: rt. click My Computer then click Manage then Event Viewer.
Or: Administrative Tools/Event Viewer or Start/Run/ eventvwr
Open the system as well as the application tabs & look for X errors. Click error line for details.
Post back the source & event id especially of errors that seem to coincide with a crash.

It is plugged in the SATA, I made the mistake the first time (when I first got the mobo) when I didn't notice there were 2 x 4 SATA connectors, but it's correct now.

As for Event viewer, I've been keeping an eye on events each time I crashed, but unfortunately, no error or warning occur at the time of the crashes.

There are a few errors but just 1 with firefox that crashed, and another with Quicktime that crashed (didn't cause a freeze though). Also one at Windows start about Creative not being able to find a file for CD-Rom service (The Creative Service for CDROM Access service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the file specified.) There are also a few warnings about TCP-IP (TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent TCP connect attempts.)

Should I post the warnings and errors even if they are far from the crash time?
What I'm going to try now is test the values of my PSU with a multimeter (I have to buy a new one, mine seems to give weird values) since my PSU allows me to change each voltages, I adjusted it based on what the motherboard values indicated, but I was told they can be far off.
I'll keep you posted if I find anything.

Those events appear to be benign.

I was wondering about testing your hard drive. I am unsure if PowerMax will detect your drive but it is worth a try:

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...&downloadID=22

Note: PowerMax v 4.21 will not detect ATA or SATA hard disks connected to embedded or add in RAID controllers, NVIDIA Force 3, Force 4, VIA KT 600 and KT800 chipsets. If the hard disk is connected to an unsupported controller, it will have to be moved to an alternate system, or controller for diagnosis.

Also as a test you could reinstall XP onto one of the Western Digital drives.

I downloaded a utility from Hitachi that can test SATA drives as well (Powermax can't).
But there was no problem with any of the Hard Drives.
I'm thinking of dual booting with XP 64 and see if I crash with that OS too.. then it's probably a hardware problem.