Now this is interesting...

[beefhole]

And the plot thickens.  Please see my thread here about my 3d acceleration problems.

When I tested the Direct3d and Directdraw capabilities through DXDiag, it was before I had played OFP and it had crashed and given me the error message (when I tried to start it again).  Well, by pure luck, I decided to test it again after it crashed and gave me the message a few minutes ago.  What I found was

Before:

DirectDraw Accelration                 Enabled
Direct3d Accleration                         Enabled
AGP Texture Acceleration             Enabled

After OFP:

DirectDraw Accelration                 Enabled
Direct3d Accleration                         Enabled
AGP Texture Acceleration             Not Available

And it gets better.  When I tested functionality before, everything was 100% aok.  When I tested it after OFP, DirectDraw was fine, and Direct3d didn't work-it said it failed in step 8, where it creates the 3d drivers (or something like that) for all three tests.

When I reboot, all this rights itself.  My computer guru hasn't called back yet, and I can't make heads or tails of this.  The only conclusion that I can come to is that I used to think that it was a hardware problem-it now appears to be a software problem with OFP.  It does something to my vid card.  A reinstall of OFP has been long overdo-is there anything else that this all might mean?

[Weather_Man]

Can you post your dxdiag? Typically, AGP not available means that your motherboard AGP/GART driver is missing or corrupt. Try reinstalling the motherboard chipset drivers.

[beefhole]

Ok, as it turned out, it was an overheating problem.  Playing with the side of the case off has seemed to fix it (I hope, I did a reinstall+reg cleaner and it's been running strong for 5 minutes, no hiccups).  I didn't pick it up as an overheating problem because all my other games have been fine, and it's never been a problem with OFP.  Thanks for all your help Weather_Man.

EDIT: Nevermind.