Help!!! Freezing solid in several games!

Hello,

I'm getting very frustrated with my upgraded computer; it freezes while playing several different games--locks up tighter than a chastity belt before prom night, necessitating a hard restart. Ugh! Within Windows, all works perfectly with ONE EXCEPTION: 3 times the system has similarly frozen, while burning a CD...but at no other time. CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn't work, NOTHING works.

Here's the info--I'm a serious long-time gamer who's also a hardware validation tech, so I see and get to play with a LOT of hardware, so I'm not a newbie:

Win 98 SE, brand new FDISK/FORMAT/reinstall after upgrading the system to a Duron 800 (stock speed--for now), 128 MB Micron PC-133 SDRAM, ABIT KT7A motherboard, ThermalTake SuperOrb HS/F, and heck, I even upgraded the power supply from a 235W unit to an Enermax 350W, dual-ball-bearing fan unit, thinking a lack of ample power was the problem

-ASUS V6600 (Pure) 32 MB video (NVidia GeForce 256); Detonator 6.50 drivers
-Sound Blaster Live! Value; drivers downloaded from web last week
-SMC network card
-Desktop resolution set to 1024x768x32, which is the same setting I usually play all my games at
-DirectX 8.0a downloaded and installed
-Games where freezing occurs: Quake 3, Crimson Skies, Unreal Tournament; sometimes within 10 minutes, sometimes after an hour and a half, but I can't remember the last time I actually exited the game the PROPER way (all games were updated with the latest patches)
-Motherboard Monitor 5.5 installed (though turned off during game-playing): CPU temp never exceeds 45 degrees Celsius
-Absolutely NO TSRs running in background (I'm very anal about this), all power-saving modes are turned off (to prevent problems while burning CDs), no screensaver in use either

For the record: The old platform was Win 98 SE, Celeron 300A overclocked to 450, 128 MB PC-100 SDRAM, ABIT BH6 (rev. 1) motherboard...and THIS thing was SOLID. It NEVER froze during ANY game, nor did it ever freeze while burning CDs. It was rock-solid stable for over 2 years (though framerates were getting pretty unplayable with the newer games, which is the reason for my upgrade).

So, I'm guessing it HAS to be one of the new parts that is faulty...but want to be sure of it before I take the matter up with my vendor. I'm frustrated as hell after spending about $450 CDN for all the upgrade parts--things work great, except for the damn freezing!

Please help! What seems to be the most likely culprit(s)?

Thanks,

Coelacanth

Does Abit use Via? If so I didn't see you mention the lates 4-in-1 drivers. If it doesn't(use Via) sorry for the post, and if you already did that, I could understand you thinking it not worth mentioning. Hope you solve your problem.

There is no problem that an Optimator can't solve.