I''m not writing this at my own computer right now, and I don''t remember all the details of the problem, but if someone can help me with these details, please do! I have tried everything I can think of, and I haven''t found any info from the net, so I hope someone here can help me. My computer: 400 Mhz PII, 64 Mb, Diamond viper v550, DirectX 7.0 The problem: When I play a game that uses DirectX the first time after I have rebooted my computer, there are usually no problems. But when I try to play another game that uses DirectX without rebooting, I get the window saying "this program has caused an illegal operation and will be shut down and blablablablaa..." (something like that, I guess everyone knows it) and there are two buttons, "close" and "details". The "details" goes something like this (I don''t remember exactly): DDHELP has caused an illegal page fault in module VPRDD.DLL (or sometimes VPRDRV.DLL) at (here comes always some few hexes, all starting something like 0137:b0??????, I don''t remember the last ones). (The data register values are always the same.) When I reboot my computer and try the game again, the error doesn''t show up. Usually. A few examples for games acting like this are Dark Omen and Worms Armageddon. Games that use Direct3D, such as Driver, System Shock 2 and Thief (or do the last two use it? at least they act the same way as Driver), have a more ''serious'' problem. The same error message as above shows up, and rebooting doesn''t help always. Thief works pretty fine, and the error is rare, but Driver ans SS2 won''t usually start at all. Sometimes they let me get to the menus, but crash when I start playing. Very rarely they work, but very rarely. Sometimes they start working when I have rebooted the computer a half a dosen times. Sometimes, when I have first played a non-DX game, the DX-using games work perfectly. My display properties are also weird. The tab "Diamond 3d" gives an message saying something like "To get advantage of the Diamond 3d, please get DirectX 6.0 or newer." But I have DirectX 7.0! Some friends have told me that my memory chips would be bad, and some have said I have to get a fan to my Viper, but I haven''t had the chance to try these out. Could the problem be one of these? Please help me, I''m getting annoyed rebooting my computer all the time, and even more annoyed about the fact that the best games won''t work on my computer.

Thanks, but I''ve tried all possible driver version/dX version/formating combinations, and they didn''t help.

Does someone have any other suggestions? Please help if you do.

I think that you computer is ill, because one or more of the DirectX drivers are injured. Every time when your DirectX closes the connection to sound, graph or to what ever it doesn''t close it correctly and leaves some poor shit to the memory. It maybe that that version of your drivers has poor connection to closing commands or whatever. I haven''t used Dx but I think that''s the problem..

Computers are just like babies, they need good care...

Thanks a lot. I''ll try those when I have the time. I should get a new 128MB memory chip tomorrow. If it doesn''t help, at least I have doubled my memory

AAAAARRGGGHHH!!!!! The problem isn''t the memory. Although Driver started the first time in a while, the error occured when I tried Thief without rebooting. I removed my soundcard and tried to re-install Windows (I fomated c, but it didn''t help. I''ll try removing my network card before re-installing Windows the next time, and getting those Detonator drivers, maybe it will help.

My soundcard was an old SB32 PnP or similar. It is very old and I have lost the discs containing the drivers, so I used some driver W95 suggested (although a ''SB32 PnP'' was still detected as an ''Other device'' in the device manager), and it worked with no prolems. I removed it while I tried to re-install W95, and I have a new SB64 but I haven''t tried it yet.

Before I re-installed windows, the ''Disable AGP support'' button in the Dxdiag was greyed out. Could it mean something?

And finally, which version of DX should I install when I re-install Windows the next time? I had 7 before I re-installed today, and now I have 6.1, and Dxdiag''s display tests seem to be smoother with 6.1.

Once again, thanks for bothering helping me, and please help a little more.