7600GT lockup problems

[jcsamp]

I recently upgraded from the onboard graphics of my computer to a GeForce 7600GT. Everything ran great for a couple hours and then I started getting random lockups and BSODs. It is not a heat issue because the GPU never gets over about 50C. I checked out the EVGA site and nVidia's site and tried all of the suggestions there. I have even tried to downclock this card to the standard 560/700 from the 580/750 EVGA clocked it at. I uninstalled all the ATI southbridge drivers and reinstalled them. I disabled the onboard graphics in the BIOS, then uninstalled all the ATI video drivers. I updated to the newest nVidia drivers as well. I even tried to uninstall my audio drivers and reinstall them. All that did was somehow map my microphone port onto my speaker port (i.e., when I try to use PTT services like ventrilo all that goes across is my game sounds; but that is a different issue). I ran Prime95 for a couple hours without issue. I can't run memtest86 because I don't have a floppy drive. I don't think it is the memory anyway, because it was working just fine before I added the new card. The only thing I can think to do now is completely wipe my disk and start over. I really don't want to do that. Any other suggestions?

Here are my system specs:
MSI RS480M2-IL
Athlon 64 3000+ (Winchester)
Patriot PDC1G3200LLK
Antec SmartPower 2.0 500W
2x Western Digital 80GB ATA 100
EVGA 256-P2-N553-AX GeForce 7600 GT CO

 

[jcsamp]

After doing a lot of tweaking and researching online, I think I have finally fixed the issue. It turns out that the microphone problem I was having was the actual culprit, not the video card. So I guess I was wrong when I said it was a separate problem. Being so frustrated with the video card issue, I decided to try to fix the audio problem first. I ran the "Test Hardware" option in the sound control panel, and it came up with an error in DirectPlay (error # 0x80004005). This site has a solution for this error: http://www.smartcomputing.com/techsupport/detail.aspx?guid=&ErrorID=22221 . Once I followed the suggestions on that page, I was once again able to use my microphone. Since then, my computer has not locked up once or dropped to BSOD, even after extended play time. It is strange how something like a software issue with an audio program can show up as an error in the video card drivers. At least it works now.