Help with a firend's machine needed

[Redwolf]

My neighbor and friend has a nice computer that needs a little...assistance.

Basically it has a variety of problems including:

1) The fonts on dialog boxes, icons, and the Start menu screw up alot (look corrupted, but the fonts themselves ar okay).

2) It's not very stable, as when I've been over there hsi computer always crashes at some point

and

3) Just recently he got a Radeon 9600. Now Warcraft III and CnC; Generals don't work for him. Strange thing is, Final Fantasy 11 (opps, I meant XI) runs perfectly on his machine, as does Counterstrike. Changing the resolution in Warcraft III and some of the options don't help, as his machine crashes about 30-40 seconds into running the game.

His specs:

AMD 1.4GHz Athlon (heat is not a problem with it)
Asus A7A266 motherboard (ALi Magick 1 chipset)
Radeon 9600 (tested with both Omega Drivers and ATI's latest drivers to no avail)
SB Live Value
Windows 98SE
1 DVD drive and 1 CD Burner
1 40Gb Hard Drive
Cable Internet (so we aren't limited by what we can dl)
Forgot PS wattage, but it's adequate

I'm really stumped at this point, and really want to help him out. I get the feeling it's something messed up about Windows and told him I can help him do a reformat tomorrow. But here's the strage thing. We tried reformatting the machine a few months ago to fix the stupid font problem...and it didn't fix it. A perfectly clean install of Win98 and hsi fonts are still messed up (and this with a Radeon 8500).

I haven't run memtest yet, but I told him he might have to run it at some point. He has the disk, so if you guys suspect the RAM I can have him run it overnight. I'm starting to suspect it myself.

[elroy]

Might try Tweak UI, it has a font repair capability along with other repair features. Also have you tried a Registry Cleaner to repair and clean out the registry?

[Redwolf]

We tried the font repair. It works temproarily, but the fonts screw up after a reboot or after a dialog box pops up. I'd post a screenshot but I'm not at his house right now.

As I said, a full reformat of his machine failed to fix this font problem, pointing to either a bad Win98 disc or a hardware problem.

[Redwolf]

I'm over at his house right now, so if you havve any suggestions I can put them into effect immediately.

[bailey]

I would first do a virous check
then run spybot
then adaware
then run system file checker,
see what you get after that

[Redwolf]

Okay, Since I have been her, I have:

Throughly checked his RAM -
He has 2 sticks of RAM, 1 stick he had before the problems arose the other he added as the problems started apppearing (except for the font probelm, that's always been there). I tested the computer with jsut the new RAM and just the old RAM to no avail. Memtester working on both sticks for 4 passes found nothing (default settings). So it's not the RAM.

I also reinstalled Windows and DirectX 9. Neither helped any of his problems. Now I'm going to try testing out his graphics card.

[Redwolf]

Okay, it's his graphics card. He saved his old 8500, and swapping it with the 9600 fixes it. Now jsut to RMA the video card...ugh. He got it for christmas, hope they'll honor the warranty.