I will update my specs when I get off work. I'm having a strange issue with pc games. Whenever I enter the character creation screen for Dragons age, Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2, Atlantica online, Sid Meyer's Civ IV , Warlord's Battlecry III, beta versions of one current mmorpg that I downloaded but cant remember the name... BUT not World of Warcraft or Warhammer Online... I crash, get a black video screen, andthe sound locks up and repeats. The only other time that itll crash is when Ive had the computer running for days and it overheats at the base of the moniter AND while its running anything with sound (while its running hot) like winamp, a game, or a video play playing a basic avi file. Ive updated my nvidia and directx drivers/files, my games are up to date, and I run avg and avast antivirus. Ive had my video card replaced and my moniter replaced (qosmio laptop) by toshiba, but the problems still exist. Ive even had the heat sinks replaced. Im beginning to think that this is purely vista software related. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Toshiba Qosmio 305x or something
Vista Home Premium 32bit
4 gigs ram
Geforce 9800 something video
intel core duo 2.2 2.2(i think thats the speeds)
I dont know how to see if the video card has dedicated memory if that even matters.

Unfortunately, I've gone through all of those suggestions before. None of that helps. It isn't an issue with just ONE game either, so most of those problems are N/A with me. Its a problem with a vast majority of games I play. I go to the character select / character creation screen and it just blacks out, makes a brbrbrbrbrbrrbrbr noise with whatever sounds going, and crashes. And I don't mean a crash I can alt+F4 from, the screen doesn't have light behind it, it just dies and the sound locks up. I have to force restart to get anywhere.

I know for a fact that it isnt overheating causing the problem. Even after replacing heat sinks and cleaning it out it crashed... and I have had it shut down for days and it would crash immediately after start up and trying out a game. Its not video card either. Its working fine and shows up in device manager with current drivers. Even had a peer double check all drivers. As far as memory goes, that sounds plausible, but how would I check? And why ONLY on character screens? I can make a character on my wifes computer for online games and skip the crashes, such as Atlantica online... but games like civ 4 where you have to choose a country/ leader, it always crashes on character select. Same with dragon's age and warlords. But like with Atlantica Online, if I make a character on my wifes computer first then I can skip character creation on my comp and play the game.

Any way to do this without a flash / cd? I'm currently out of town on work and don't have access to those.

I ran memtest like your link said via a jumpdrive and ran it for 20 hours overnight and while I was at work. I came back and it was still only on Test #6, but it was at 72% pass and said something along the lines of *****Passed. No errors Detected. Hit Escape to restart***** So, now what do I try?