SBLive is KNOWN to have issues. Pull it and see if the problem persists (most games will run fine without a sound card). If the problem goes away, move the SBLive to another slot.
I doubt it's the SBLive, though, as the problem would cause either a lockup or a reboot - rarely does it dump you to the desktop.
Desktop dump sounds like a video issue.
Some general suggestions:
- I recommend the reference drivers over the manufacturer's. Do NOT use beta or leaked drivers - use only the latest official reference drivers. Get them here:
http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=drivers
- Remove any utilities for your old video card (Voodoo cards for instance install 3Dfx tools which MUST be removed via the Add/Remove icon in Control Panel). Also, you should ALWAYS change the video driver to "Standard VGA" first before swapping cards to purge the old driver. If you didn't do that before, do it now. Change it to "Standard VGA", reboot and it'll redetect the geforce and ask you for drivers.
- If you're overclocking (either the vid card or the cpu), don't and see if that helps.
- In the motherboard's BIOS menu, make sure that "Assign IRQ to VGA" is enabled and that both "Video BIOS Caching" and "Video Ram Shadow" are disabled. Set "AGP Aperature" to 64.
- The Geforce does NOT like to share an IRQ with other devices - make sure it's the only card using it's IRQ. If you can't change the IRQ for the conflicting card in Device Manager, then you must move the card to another slot. NOTE: If you have WinXP or Win2K, ALL your devices will be sharing a single IRQ. This is okay.
- Go to the motherboard manufacturer's web site and see if there's an updated Flash BIOS for your mobo. It could be your AGP bus support isn't up to spec.
- You may not have the proper or the latest drivers for you motherboard's APG to PCI Bridge. The Geforce is a true AGP card (unlike 3Dfx cards) and is very fussy about having the AGP bus setup properly. This is a MAJOR gotcha. Windows will install the wrong mobo drivers until you update them. There should be drivers that came with your motherboard on a CD, but you should download the latest version from the motherboard manufacurer's web site. If you have a VIA board then you need the lates 4-in-1 drivers.
- It's possible that some other device is causing the problem. Best way to isolate it is to pull ALL your cards except the vid card (IMPORTANT: note what slot each card was installed in). Play the misbehaving game and see if it runs stable (yes, the game should run just fine without a sound card installed). If it behaves, install each card ONE BY ONE starting with the sound card until you isolate the bad boy. It's important to put the cards back in their original slots to avoid PCI IRQ Sharing problems (see next paragraph).
- You may have a card that has a PCI IRQ channel sharing problem (NOT the same as an IRQ conflict). The SBLive, NICs and SCSI controllers are very prone to this. Fix is essentially the same as mentioned in the previous paragraph except when you find the misbehaving card, you need to move it to another slot. More details on this problem here:
http://soldcentralfl.com/quakecoop/glfaq5.htm#5_9
- You may have background app running causing problems. I like to run a very clean system when play - I want NOTHING running in the background. Don't run anything in the background: Virus Scanners, disk utils, reminder programs, taskbar shortcuts for Real Player, AOL Instant Messenger, etc). If you have Win98 run MSCONFIG.EXE click on the Startup tab. Uncheck anything you don't need running - Windows ONLY requires System Tray, Task Monitor and Power Profile to run properly (and you can lose Power Profile if your computer doesn't use sleep mode). Uncheck everything else unless it's required by something.
- You should also check out the Geforce FAQ at
http://geforcefaq.com
Hope this helps...
