Video memory faulty? Cant play Counter strike on my 5670! Is my video card dead?

It all started when I came back from my 3 week vacation and took the laptop of its bag where I had stored it so that I wouldnt gather dust or be exposed to heat, etc. It started up fine, but the fans made that anyoning screeching sound that they sometimes do when they are spinning really fast. Anyway, the next day, when I started to do something on the computer besides just writing emails and IMing friends, I started up Battlefield: Vietnam. I played that for half an hour or so and then switched over to The Specialists, a Half Life mod, then the computer suddenly crashed. Total crash.

I rebooted, tried again, now I had a weird freeze, the screen just totally froze and nothing happened. The next time I had a freeze but the screen went black. I got soem error messages about some ntoskrnl stuff being messed up. So I fixed that. Anyway, all these types of freezes and some reboot crashes (it would just suddenly reboot) kept happening, always about 10 minutes or so into any 3d game. So, long story short, despite all my efforts (memory test, HDD test, virus scan, HDD sector bug scan, cooling fan cleaning, driver checks, reinstalations, etc. etc.) I finally formated the hard drive and reinstalled Windows 2000 Pro once again and then installed everything from scratch. This took me all day, and finally at 3 in the morning I thought I would try some Half Life mod again since that was one of the things which caused the computer to crash. And DAMN IT TO HELL, my day's worth of work was all for naught! IT CRASHED AGAIN! With a damn reboot crash! There was NOTHING in the Event Viewer.

Since I've eliminated just about everything else, could it be that my video card's memory is messed up? Is there a video card memory checker? I tried to find one after I checked the RAM and HDD with their respective diagnostic tools, but I couldnt find one to check the video card. So why is it that the video card does everything fine, it seems, but then the computer crashes when I play Half Life or Battlefield: Vietnam?

Someone please offer me some words of advice... I feel horrible at the moment. I think I will just have to wait until the brand new Sagers come out later this year (yeah right!).... I mean in March or whenever...

A replacable PCI-E videocard would rock... I cant replace the MR9000 Pro in my 5670 that easily.... well.... I can't really at all... I guess it's no games for half a year+ now... until I can get a new computer.... damn piece of *** 5670....

But... listen up... I have been using Win 2000 Pro for playing these very same games for more than a year now! I NEVER had problems! I love the stability and class of W2K, XP is a bloated piece of malfunction crashware that I doubt will be any more stable and will expose me to a gazillion exploits that still haven't been fixed.

So... uh... you really thing its the OS? It worked fine for a long long time... I played battlefield vietnam on it for many many hours nonstop countless times... never as much as a hickup.... What are the odds that XP will fix this?

How can I test my video card? I still think it is somehow messed up...

I dont understand how it could be my PSU? You mean the power brick or the part in the laptop? (powerbrick < internals as far as cost of replacement goes...) Anyway, would running a 6 year old videogame require that much extra power (peak power?) that the PSU cant handle it anymore? But how come it also crashes when I watch DVD's or simpsons clips from my hard drive (both which by far not as power intensive as running 3d games (albeit old ones... so...)? Is it just that the computer cannot handle any extra power strain? Continous hard drive usage/video card usage??? I very much doubt it's the PSU.

Anyway, I can listen to MP3's and shoutcast streams all day long, I can IM, I can browse the web with as many windows open as I want, I can run Photoshop just fine, I can render complex fractals for hours and it doesnt crash... it only crashes when I do something visual... that is anything video related.... movies, games, etc... strange... rendering doesnt affect it, I guess that is more CPU demanding than video card demanding...

I just might contact Sager again. Last time they were so unhelpful. Told me to clean the friggin fan. Of course there was only surface dust there! That wouldn't cause any crashes anyway.... jeez....

Then the dumb Sager fool was telling that I should just let it sit in the BIOS menu overnight.... yeah... great... that's not REALLY going to eliminate the VIDEO CARD! I've checked the hard drive... that's in perfect condition, so is the RAM, the CPU can't only work halfways so that obviously good... power supply? I doubt it, there is no justification for that. It's def. the video card.

Comeon.... I am sure one of you overclockers out there has a video card memory checker to check his card's memory after a blistering run... I bet the memory is screwed up or something...

Grr.... college starts in a few weeks... I need a frigging working computer. Hmmm, maybe not. No videos, DVD's, and games on the laptop = conducive to lots of studying and more time for music... maybe it's not so bad that I cant play games or watch movies now... hehe... no tempations or distractions... w00t!