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Q. My GeForce keeps on locking up or drops me back to the desktop during 3D applications.
How can I fix it?
If you are getting lockups at startup, make sure you read the '
Windows locks up before it finishes loading, and a
thin green line may appear across the top of the screen. How can I fix it?' question first.
There are a number of causes of this:

Are you overclocking either the GeForce or your processor? If you are, try clocking back to normal and
see if it fixes the problem. If it does, you need more cooling.

Have you assigned an IRQ to VGA in your BIOS? If not, do so.

Make sure that your GeForce card is not sharing any IRQs with another card (with the exception of the
'IRQ Holder for PCI Steering' device which will always use the same IRQ as the GeForce). If you find
that the GeForce is sharing an IRQ with a PCI or ISA card, in the case of a PCI card try moving the PCI
card to another slot (avoid the slot directly next to the AGP slot as this usually shares an IRQ with the
AGP slot) or, in the case of an ISA card, reconfigure the card to use another IRQ. You may need to read
the 'I have Windows 2000 and all of my devices share the same IRQ, causing problems with my
GeForce. How can I fix it?' question.
Note that in Windows 2000 all PCI and AGP cards by default are assigned to the same IRQ. You will
need to follow the steps in the 'I have Windows 2000 and all of my devices share the same IRQ, causing
problems with my GeForce. How can I fix it?' question if you think that this is the cause of the lockups.

Are you running a virus checker in the background? Try disabling it.

If you are using a VIA chipset motherboard and an Athlon processor, then try reading the following
guide, which includes most of the relevant tips from below:
http://www.teamanarchy.com/writeups.php?idx=986866324
Other things to try:

Try turning the 'Hardware acceleration' slider in the System Control Panel's Performance / Graphics
section down one notch. This may also increase performance, although it is possible that you will not be
able to overclock so far.

Try installing the latest AGP drivers for your motherboard chipset if you haven't got an Intel
motherboard. If you have a VIA board you may have to read the 'I installed the VIA AGP drivers under
Windows 2000 but they don't seem to have had any effect (the names of the devices have not changed).
How can I fix this?' question to check that they are installed correctly.

Try installing the latest (leaked) drivers.

If you are using the 2x.xx series of drivers and Windows 2000/XP, make sure you read the 'When I
install the 2x.xx series of drivers Windows 2000/XP I get instability problems, insufficient virtual
memory errors or an error (possibly about an infinite loop) in nv4_disp.dll. How can I fix it?' question.

Try changing your AGP Aperture in your BIOS to another value (keep it above 16 as setting it at or
below 16 will disable AGP) - see the 'How can I change my AGP Aperture size?' question.

Check that you have the following settings set as follows in your BIOS:

Video BIOS Shadow - Disabled

Video BIOS Cacheable - Disabled

C8000
-
xxxxx Shadow
-
Disabled
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GeForce FAQ