Thanks to Theodore A. Jump for sending me the follow solution to fix lockups on ASUS SMP/ACPI motherboards (P2B-D, P2B-DS, P2B-D2, P2L97-D, and P2L97-DS):

I had a huge problem with my PC ever since Win2K RC3 came out - that being that any time I initiated 3D acceleration activity (OpenGL or D3D) on my machine it would hard-lock, requiring a hardware reset to reclaim control. This had never happened before (!) since I built the machine in fall ´98 under either Win95, Win98, or Win NT 4 Workstation.

Turns out, it was a combination of an SMP + ACPI environment that triggered the problem. Specifically, on my mainboard the hardware was generating superfluous interrupts of significant enough quantity to consume 50% cpu time on my Dual P-II system - when the OS was idle.

Fixing this required a hardware modification, relocating one micro-resistor on the board. Once the resistor was relocted, the CPU time went to nil on idle, and 3D apps now execute without pain or lockups under both D3D and OpenGL on my TNT-1 card.

In my case this appears to be a vendor specific problem, specifically a series of SMP boards from ASUStek (P2B-D, P2B-DS, P2B-D2, P2L97-D, and P2L97-DS models are affected) of which mine is the P2B-DS. To read about the specific fix you can get the info by going to any ASUS site ( http://www.asus.com here in the USA) and following the path "Technical Ref -> ACPI -> Solution" to get the relevant page. A URL for the server here in the USA is:

http://www.asus.com/products/Techref/Acpi/solution.html

The fix is not for the fearsome to do on their own, however if you´re handy with a soldering iron you can take care of it - took me all of about ten minutes.

*whew*

Now I can get back to a lock-free existance ... hopefully.

-Ted

Kevin Quattro send me addentional informations: