Last week I put a new Asus TUSL2-C motherboard (great reputation; solid, reliable board) in because my old board, I discovered, was on the VIA 133 chipset and even though it was built for the Pentium 3 it could only utilize this CPU through an adapter which are real cheap in design and bottlenecks P3s. Before I give you my computer problems, let me give you additional specs:

1. New motherboard as mentioned.
2. New WD 40 gig, 7200 RPM HD
3. P3 533 EB
4. 256 100Mhz SDRAM
5. Windows 98 SE
6. Soundblaster Live X-Gamer (not the newer 5.1 version)
7. Diamond Viper 770 (non-ultra) 32 meg, 2x/4x video card
8. Direct 8X was loaded from the Asus CD
9. U.S. Robotics 56k modem

* If you need more info. I'll try to supply. I loaded most of the software/
hardware on my new harddrive when I was still using the old motherboard. I have scanned for viruses (none found), ran Ad-aware (nothing there), defragged, checked for device conflicts (there are none),etc., etc., etc., and I'm still getting the following problems:

A. Whenever I try to download off of the internet to update my drivers for my sound card and video card the screen freezes EVERY TIME. I can't download WinZip, etc. My ISP provider is AOL version 7 and I know there are issues with this ISP, but prior to this upgrading I could download without a hitch.

B. When I go to restart the computer after loading software the computer freezes at the Windows screen as it attempts to restart and remains there forever.

C. There are times when AOL will freeze when I am simply checking a websight.

* If it is a driver problem for either the sound or video card then I am stuck because there is no way for me to download drivers from the net. I do want to upgrade both my video card and P3, but until then I've got to make these due. I have never had problems playing games at all. Thanks for reading this and any suggestions will be most helpful.

Motherboard drivers are probably the way to go. Try and onto the net at a library or somewhere and download them. Or the problem might simply be that the new motherboard drivers are confilciting iwth the ones for the old board. Not much you can do about that without re-isntalling windows. It shoudnt be neccessary to delete everything, just your windows directory.

I'm thinking that a reload of Windows might be the best option. You won't lose anything else, just run through the install process again and allow it to pick up all your devices.

Then first thing, update the motherboard drivers and use Windows Update to get any Windows related patches. Once that's done, try and download and install the video and sound drivers.

Tell us how you go.

The problem might also be the MoBo you are useing. Via chipsets suck. If reloading drivers and software dont help your problem you might want to just bite the bullet and invest in a new board. It will cost a little money but will save a lot of aggravation.