As some of you may know, I recently installed Windows XP on my system.

So far, not so good.

My computer system has one of those cutting-edge video cards (NVidia GeForce 400 MX w/ 64 meg) that allows me to output the video to my monitor and my big screen TV. I use my DVD drive (inside the computer) to play videos on my TV.

Yeah, it's a pretty sweet setup.

I have the latest NVidia drivers (30.82) for my video card (for Windows 2000 / XP). When the driver is installed, I get a message that "this video driver has not been certified by Microsoft ... blah blah" warning. Basically, this window is Microsoft's nice way of saying that there is a good chance that my system might crash if I decide to use this "uncertified" driver.

A slight dilemma.

If I use the latest NVidia driver, my system * does * lock up. I know this is true because if I use the Microsoft driver, my system is stable... but then I can't use the TV OUT option on my video card because it isn't supported with the Microsoft driver.

Sometimes, my system locks up without warning. Other times, Windows XP is nice enough to give me a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) and tell me that I should try disabling the Video Shadowing in my BIOS. The problem is that I can't disable this Video Shadowing because my BIOS doesn't have this option (Pheonix Server BIOS, Tyan Tiger Multi Processor 2460 motherboard). I've checked the Tyan web site for a BIOS update but there was nothing relevant to my issue.

Searching google for clues

I've searched google for clues to this mystery but haven't seen anything in the way of an answer to the problem. All I found was a bunch of web pages talking about the latest driver release from NVidia.

What next?

Since this issue appears to be isolated, it might be one of those strange instances where there is a hardware incompatibility. Yes, I've seen it before -- very strange things that just shouldn't happen and there isn't a reasonable explanation for it other than incompatible hardware.

The strange thing is that Windows 2000 worked flawless. Then again, we're talking about two different operating systems, and they do function quite differently (even though they are built on the same technology).

I have another NVidia GeForce video card that has TV OUT on it, and I think I'm going to try it in this machine. I'll keep you posted if I end up solving this mystery.

Side note: this article has been updated.