I don't know where to go from here but this is what is happening on my pc. I have a compaq (yeah I know but it was given to me) and it had windows 98 installed on it. As soon as I got it I added 128 megs of RAM, replaced the phillips cd write drive with my Sony write drive, and added a lynksis wireless internet adapter for the cable modem. I also created a start up disk, then reformatted my hard drive, and installed windows 2000 Pro. Everything seems to go alright until I try to play any type of audio or video file in either winamp, media player9, or another generic playbackk system that came with the 2000 application. Everytime i try to play something, within a few seconds, the pc freezes up and I can't do anything except physically shut down and power up. Any ideas as to what could be causing this? I'm lost at this point and have never experienced this before. It only seems to happen when I try to play audio files of any sort. I have tried switching out memory card but that didn't change anything.
Thanks for any advice anyone could give!
Bill

What sound card does that system have? Find out what sound card, and seek out the manufacturer's webpage, and download the latest drivers for it, (be sure you get drivers compatible with Windows 2000!!), install them, and see if that fixes it.

If you have problems locating the drivers, or figuring out what sound card you have, let me know, I'll see if I can help.

Good luck, let me know how you fare.

Identify the model number of the Compaq, head off to HP's driver download section and search for Windows 2000 drivers for it if the thing has onboard audio. While you're there, make sure you obtain any motherboard chipset drivers and those for other components as well. Your system is quite likely using generic, inbuilt Windows drivers.

If it has an add-in soundcard, get drivers for it from the card manufacturer's website. You'll still need to ensure that you're using the appropriate chipset drivers though.

If there are no Windows 2000 drivers avaialable for the system you might just be out of luck. Compaq were never very hepful to their customers with regard to ensuring that drivers were made available for Operating System upgrades. Large 'name brand' companies seldom are. They'd rather you purchased another PC from them instead