I've recently discovered that my Windows XP Pro is a pirated Windows Disk, and I -will- be purchasing a proper disk from PC Club or Best Buy.

Here are my computer specs:

Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2000+
Heatsink: OEM Fan in box with CPU
Power Supply: Antec TruPower 430Watt
OS: Windows XP Pro (Devil's 0wn Bootleg)
Mainboard: MSI KT3 Ultra-2 (MS-6380)
RAM: Both are 256 DDR PC-2100 RAM, 1 is Corsair, other is not.
Sound Card: Soundblaster Audigy Gamer
Video Card: AOpen Nvidia GeForce4 MX440 64meg
Hard Drive: Maxtor 40GB 7200RPM (2 Partitions, 15gig for XP in NT, rest in FAT32)
CD-Rom: Sony CD-RW (Forgot Speeds of RW/W) 40x Read


The following Text below this I copied from another post at another board. What I'm wanting to ask the community here is if someone can clearly tell me if this well-known bootleg can cause the issue I am describing below - - -


"Just for the record, over the past year I have reformatted the HD numerous times while making sure to delete partitions. I have always installed the drivers from scratch and updated them to the latest available from the manufacturers website. I keep a clean ship and run continuously Webroot Spysweeper, & Spykiller to keep spyware off. I was using Norton for quite a while as my Antivirus, but I deleted it.. and use EZ Firewall & Antivirus..which I always keep on and updated.

Now, what happens is this. As long as I do not play any games which require 3D usage.. the computer runs just fine like any other PC. But when I play my games, the problem arises out of no where. I play Counter-Strike online, Day of Defeat, & Wolfenstein. These games will start up fine and I can play for a while.. but out of the friggin' blue, 1 of 2 things will happen - -

1. Screen will lock up, computer will lock up, and some sound will go into a loop & continue to play. This will stay like this until I restart the computer by holding the power button 5secs or hitting RESET.

2. Computer will Reboot. Completely, no shutdown.. nothing... a complete Reboot.

It seems that with the higher end game (graphics wise), the faster the problem happens. I have recently begun playing Neverwinter Nights: Gold. I can play the game just fine.. but when it goes to load towns or areas... the bar will fill up til just about a lil over 3/4 and will pause. Either it will continue to load, or I will have the lockup or reboot issue."

I hope I'm not breaking any rules or wasting anyone's time, ... I've been having this issue for over a year now...and I am just so tired of it. Gaming is my favorite pastime, and this issue has darn near ruined it for me. I cannot figure out what it is, nor can any of my friends. Though, while browsing the internet for this issue tonight.. I stumbled upon your forums and saw mentioning of this bootleg.
Please help... I just want to know if I may have a hardware issue, or if it's this dang blasted Devil's 0wn Bootleg....

sounds like a hardware conflict of buggy graphics card drivers to me.
try moving one of your pci cards so there is a gap between agp and the 1st pci card.
try moving your pci cards to different slots.
i would guess your graphics card and sound card are sharing resources or something.
if your sound card is directly below your agp card move it down a slot further so there is a free pci slot below the graphics card.
dont know about more recent mother boards but some of the older ones the agp slot and pci 1 share resources more often that not.

i really doubt its an OS problem
could be that one of your ram sticks is borked aswell theres a dos program that you can use to check your ram but i cant remember what its called.
im sure someone will reply with its name and download location.

also make sure you have the latest drivers for your motherboard.

That sounds familiar. Happens from time to time, latest I had was with Doom 3. I changed from m/b sound to a pci card and upgraded the graphics card and now problem has gone. Your graphics card is a lot behind the pace.

Sounds like a cooling issue to me....
I mena yes i could see how having corp could effect ur games if u cant updates to sp2( compatabilty and all)

But if it were me id make sure the GPU and CPU are staying cool

|Drew|