Ghost Recon AW crashes OS and F.E.A.R. fails upon load...help

I'm not sure where this problem is coming from. I have Winows XP Pro SP2 fully up to date and these games have the above symptoms for seemingly no reason at all...and the OS is a fresh install that I performed just this morning. F.E.A.R. has been failing to load for the longest time, and GRAW just starting rebooting my OS for no reason at all. I have the latest Direct X 9.0c (April), latest video and latest sound drivers. I even went as far as reinstalling the video and sound drivers to hope it'll alleviate the situation, but to no avail. I don't know what to do at this point. Here are my specs:

Windows XP Pro SP2
BFG GeForce 6800GT OC
Sound Blaster Audigy
ASUS K8V-X VIA 8237
AMD Sempron 64 3000+
1.5GB DDR400 (PC3200)

Any help on this? Thanks.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

GRAW crashed on me when I had sound on hw mode, you might try sw mode.
are you using auto detected settings? if you aren't, you might try it.
as for Fear, have you defragged your hard drive lately? might try reinstalling if that doesn't help.
just some things you might try.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

found the problem with F.E.A.R.--there was a conflict with Ace Mega Codecs Pack. I had it on Professional Mode, which installed EVERY code (135MB+). Thing with GRAW is that I can't even get to the options screen...I don't even see the first splash screen...it just crashes the OS. Frustrating...especially seeing this is a fresh install.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Have you disabled automatic rebooting upon system failure?

(Right click on "My Computer," click on properties, advanced tab, click button under "System startup, system failure, system recovery," uncheck "Automatically restart.")

That should pop up a BSOD with a veritable goldmine of info when you crash.

Do that, run GRAW again, and see if one pops up. If it does, check if there's any message in all caps (like HARDWARE_CHECK_EXCEPTION) or a STOP error along with some hexadecimal numbers. If there are, copy them down and show them to us.

Granted, for me I still automatically reboot DESPITE having that unchecked, but I almost never crash so I don't mind too much.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Alright, I'll do that and report the stop error for the reboot.

Double Post:
Well, I'm getting a 0x8E stop, and there's nothing else specific about the crash. I've googled it and some forums say it's a RAM problem, but I don't have a problem at all with my RAM playing other intensive games, i.e. BF2, FEAR (finally), and COD2. What could possibly be the problem?

Double Post:
Ok, I've reverted back to WHQL drivers for my graphics (84.56), and now GRAW just crashes to desktop.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Were you using the new beta drivers before? If not, try those. Otherwise, try rolling back one more version.

It might also indeed be the RAM. It wouldn't surprise me if GRAW accessed an address that none of the others do. It's probably nothing, but it's better to be thorough than assume.

Switch out the RAM you have with a different stick, until you've either got nothing but new RAM in there, or the problem disappears.

Most amazing jew boots

I found the problem with GRAW. I switched compatibility to Win2000, GRAW itself gave me an error code grcmp1.04 or something like that, googled that, and turned out the sound drivers were messed up. So I downloaded the latest drivers through Creative's Auto Update.

FELIPE NO