For those of you who are wondering where Daristin Wensbane is, or why he may appear and disappear without actually doing anything, here's why:

I have been experiencing a graphics glitch with nv4_disp in Windows XP Professional that causes freezing, game crashing, and Blue Screens of Death (infinite loops/memory dumps). Over the past couple of months, the problem has deteriorated to the point that the game has become unplayable. I suspect it is related to the last automatic update (SP 2?), as it has become an epidemic.

I have spent some time in other servers (with more powerful characters less likely to die) trying to troubleshoot the problem, and my efforts at fixing it only seem to have made it worse.

I'm hooked on EFU, but it looks like Daristin's going to have to be on hiatus for a few days, weeks, or longer.

I've looked into several solutions, including reinstalling nwn and the driver, adjusting gfx and sound settings, disabling firewalls, and running crack fixes. Nothing has helped and the problem continues to worsen. If anyone knows a solution that works for sure, please let me know.

I'll sound the horn of the overheating/power supply issue. Try running Prime95 for a long time (and another copy if you have a dual core/dual processor/hyper threading setup)...it will stress your machine enough to point you in the right direction if it really is one of the above two problems. There is also a program out there specially for gpu loading, but I do not recall it off hand. See how Prime95 does...you should be able to run it continually without the program stopping or your computer shutting down.

Be sure to open your PC and give the innards a good vacuum too!