Just got Warcraft 3.. and the game occasionally (actually rarely) crashes. But a while ago I got my first, and I swear, my first squeal of death out of my computer.

I've heard it could be due to a poor PSU (mine is a enermax 300watt whisper, should be fine)
I've heard its the Audigys fault
and I've heard its VIA's fault.

Whatever the reason for this, I need to fix it.
Dungeon Siege does not work on my computer for more than 1 minute from the point I load my saved game.
my friend has a similar setup (athlon/kt266a) has the same exact problem in DS but he has a GF4 4600 and is using onboard sound instead of his audigy.
yet another friend has a similar setup (kt266/athlon) and uses a radeon 7500 with no audigy and no problem in DS. I think this is more due to the ATI rather than the lack of an audigy considering my other friend isnt using his audigy.

In Warcraft 3 I had a few crashes but they stopped, then I got the squeal of death, total lockup.

I'm not dealing with whatever hardware is responsible for this.

Judging from things, VIA isnt to blame but Nvidia and Creative.
But I'm leaning towards ridding myself of VIA, then if it persists get rid of the Creative (yes you read right), then rid myself of AMD (not so much AMD but for the lack of quality chipsets, rid myself of VIA/SIS).

I welcome your opinion even your vile anti creative remarks, when *I* get the squeal of death.. its on, its something I'd never gotten before.

Also when I have my hauppauge wintv go on and access another slightly intensive task like cd burning, the audio cuts out on the hauppauge and forces me to restart it to get the sound back. If i restart the tuner the computer does a complete lock.

Also when I pull out the Audigy, DS does not improve at all on crashing in case you were wondering, so I'm not necessarily blaming Creative there.

I think the VIA crap is making all my hardware malfunction and run like crap, including my nvidia/creative.

If a SIS745 will fix it they are my salvation.. this is a plea for your unbiased honest opinions.

Athlon XP 1700+,KT266A,Geforce3, Audigy.. 'nuff said.

i think your power unit is too weak. borrow an 350W power unit from a friend and try it with that

GERMANY IS RUNNER-UP WORLD CHAMPION!!!

If you can't get a different ps, try different combos of the nvidia drivers. I once had to install the latest nvidia driver off their website over the standard driver without removing it first. Then my game ran fine. You can also try disabling agp fast writes in the bios. Good luck.