Black screen lockup

Some basic information first.

OS: WinXP
Motherboard: Gigabyte 770T usb3
Video: ASUS T220 1GB (GeForce 220)
Memory: 4gb ddr3 1333 mhz
Etc: All drivers current, all parts nearly (less than 2 months) new.

The problem: Recently (a week ago), When trying to load a game that requires 3D, the game would lock up before loading. I don't play many games, so I only have 3 examples.

EVE online, locks up after the splash screen. (before it loads up the name/password screen)
D&D online, Locks up just after login, before it loads up the character select.
Mabinogi, Locks up after the updater. (This is actually a white screen, but that is what it should be.)

In all cases, there is no sound loop, no crazy artifacts, no messy graphics. It loads up the window, and stops. Black (or white) screen, and does nothing.

I have swapped out the card (have an identical system that I have just bought and almost finished building)
The memory is known good (tried out on new system.)
The PSU shows total unwavering power in the BIOS monitor.
The actual GFX card is not attached to the PSU. (By design, not because I forgot to plug it in. Go low power!)
Hard drives are sound, and also new. (Mirrored too)

Other odd things.

DXdiag tests the 3d as working.
It is very hard to close the program afterward. Even End-processing it. Shutting down (or logging out) takes a long time (minutes, instead of seconds.) (Note: Shut down is only slow if I have tried to run one of these games. Otherwise, it takes seconds to logout or shut down.)

I hope I've been clear. If not, I can clarify with specific questions.

chances are the internet connection is the biggest problem, can you play games installed on the HDD ok? if so download internet bandwidth meter and check
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Netwo [...] dth-Tools/
http://www.metal-machine.de/reader [...] =tpmod;dl( this is the one I use)

I wish I had cable again (sigh)

that sounds like a driver issue, even if they are new, try this, bring up a command prompt, right click, Run As Administrator> type sfc/scannow and hit enter, if it says there are no errors, try restarting DoW2, see what happens, what drivers are you using?

after a few seconds of video?

right click on the desktop icon and select Run As Administrator

run the GAME as Admin