[Big Mountain]

My system:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700
ASUS p5n-E SLI
Windows MCE Sp2
1x EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX 786MB (single card not SLI)
2048MB RAM Corsair DDR2
320GB STATII HD


My major problems:
1)Random crashes, especially in games. Weird performance (no crashes if I only run programs for 30 minutes than exit and restart program)
2)Strange “PCI Device found” message... there is no new device!!
3)Comodo firewall possibly causing problems?

How it started:
I was having trouble (random crashes and restarts) my brand-new computer. I decided to update the drivers from 97.44 to 97.92 for my GPU (Nvidia 8800).

I uninstall the ether net driver (assuming it would reinstall when I install the new graphic driver…. Why is the Ethernet mixed in with the video card driver?). This obviously caused many things to stop working… and (as per screen instructions) I tried to reinstall Windows... which crashed and presumably corrupted system making my vid card not function (with or without drivers!).

How it got “fixed” the first time:
To make a long story short, after many MANY attempts to install video drivers, I had a guy from the geek squad reinstall Windows (which he had a lot of problems too! It did get done though and reinstall my drivers (basically for everything)). So my system worked.

The “new” problem:
After my computer was fixed I decided to get World of Warcraft. I installed this and it worked fine for a few days than it started hard freezing every 5-30 minutes. It appears that this is common with the dodgy 8800 drivers (they suck). However it seems like most people with 8800s only have problems in certain areas of WoW and with certain other games…. This was not the case with me I had problems with other games (Oblivion, BF2142) not to mention that sometimes (rarely) I would get reboots/BSOD with nothing active.

I did a clean driver install (the right way this time)…. And that fixed my crashes in WoW for about 40 minutes, than it hardlocked. After that I found that if I just played for 30 minutes, exit the game than relog back on I could play with no crashes.

I was beginning to suspect background programs (Comodo firewall and Windows Defender), so I disabled these while playing WoW.

I did this all day yesterday; I played for about 6 hours in 30minute chunks with no problems what-so-ever. This entire time my firewall and windows defender where disabled… so I figured I would see what the Firewall would do if it was active. So I turned it on and started WoW. Sure enough it hardlocked after 5 minutes.

This hardlock was different though in that when I rebooted I got some odd text flash up before Windows loaded and after Windows booted it said I had a “New found PCI device”!! WTF?

Oddly enough everything works normally except I have a “PCI device” that is driverless. I tried finding a driver for the mystery device on the mobo disk, the 8800 disk, nothing works. I tried rolling back my system and it still says “new PCI device found” when I boot Windows.

WoW still locks up (presumably) I haven’t confirmed this but I doubt that it fixed its self. Why would the game be fine for 30 minutes and than crash? I don’t think it is a heat issue, it never gets above 65C (I can keep it at about 60C with fans maxed out).

HELP!
Someone help me please! Be as verbose in your answer/instructions as possible (I am not very tech savvy)... I just want a computer that works instead of stressing me out!

Thanks!