Directx has encountered an unrecoverable error + display driver crash

Hi all

Got a problem with my graphics drivers/directx/something else......

Went to play BF2 the other day, kept on crashing to desktop, then crashed to the point of restarting the pc. This time I thought I would try COD 4, too see if that worked. In COD4 the screen seemed to freeze, but not the rest of the system as I could hear the game running in the background. This time I managed to CTRL+ALT+DEL out of it, and it popped up with the error "DirectX has encountered an unrecoverable error". So I then went to try another game Live for speed, a racing sim. The game just locked up on me, including the sound this time.


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I decided the first thing to do was to re-install the graphics driver to an older version. Did that, then when it was about to display the log in screen, the screen went blank although I could still hear windows start up if I happened to click in the right place. I could access windows through safe mode, to uninstall the graphics drivers, but making sure I removed every existance of them this time!!! Then I was able to boot into windows on the stock drivers. I reinstalled the nvidia drivers, and I was then able to get into windows with the nvidia drivers running.
(Above problem seems to be solved, but I though I would include it incase it had anything to do what is happening with the games)
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So after that, I tried running COD4 again, same error. Tried the other games, all froze.

Everything was running smoothly before this, I was even running operation flashpoint 2 and full.

I don't think its the drivers, I've tried a number of versions now with the same results. Could it be a problem with DirectX itself?


My system specs are;

MOBO: ASUS PK5
CPU: 2.6 Core 2 Duo
Graphics: 9800GX2
Ram: 4GB Corsair 800mhz
Hard drives: 3x 500mb samsung
PSU: Jeantech Storm 700W
Monitor: ASUS VH226H 22" 16:9 HD

Cheers.