DragonSpawn

Specs:

ASUS 8800GTX
EP34C-DS3R Gigabyte motherboard



Issue:

I run Windows XP home edition. The issue is more whenever I start a game, the small loading screen appears. And at the 1-1.5 second transition phase where the game should go fullscreen the PC BSOD's and crashes.

The error I got was:


Now I assume it is a driver issue. More specifically I had a cheap USB headset, it is possible that it interferes with the VC drivers & onboard mobo audio drivers. I uninstalled the cheap USB headset and hoped the uninstall got rid of all that headsets audio drivers. Can't be sure though.

I got it to work for a day though oddly enough... after disabling the realtek drivers, rebooting the pc, then enabling the realtek drivers again. All games booted fine repeatedly. However the next day it did the crashing again. So I tried the disabling/enabling again but it continued crashing.

Another oddity is I can start all games in windowed mode. It's just that when they go fullscreen that the crashes happen. Same on the individual chance that it doesn't crash, maybe 1/10 or 1/15 tries, it crashes if I alt-tab.






I think I may have found my issue. It's an IRQ conflict.

My soundcard and videocard are using the same IRQ port. 16. And the manual setting is greyed out:









What other kind of solution can there be to put either the VC or the soundcard onto a different IRQ slot?




I can .rar the minidumps from my windows system if need be?



PS: Remember a few days ago, the day before the issues started. I installed a lower quality USB headset which also installed it's on drivers onto the machine. I then out of ignorance uninstalled the realtek audio drivers. Got no sound. Downloaded and reinstalled the realtek audio, uninstalled the headset drivers.

Could that amateur slobbob job have brought about a driver imbalance that is causing the issue? Since mayhaps part of the USB headsets audio drivers is still on the machine somewhere, or the slop on/off/on of the audio drivers disturbed the precarious balance needed since the video/audio drivers share the same IRQ slot?

That is just some random thoughts of mine. Don't know if they help or not. I hope the minidumps tell you the issue.




PSS:




Some pictures I hope might help: