New computer -> black screen & lockup x_xFollow

I don't think it's the "black screen of death," but when I hit play on EQ2 my monitor goes black and my computer stops responding. The mouse cursor shows up and moves around (its the EQ2 cursor), and I can usually hear the opening music, but nothing really happens, and I can't ctrl-alt-del or alt-tab.

I don't think it's a hardware problem, because I can run the 3DMarks jut fine, and the scores are about what I would expect. If anyone has seen this before, please let me know how it was fixed.

Thanks

Ah, sorry, I suppose that would help ><

Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
Athlon64 4000+
BFG Geforce 6800 Ultra OC, regular nVidia drivers (71.84)
RAM is 1GB, pretty cheap stuff for now
2x 74GB WD Raptor, RAID 0 on si3114
WinXP SP2, pretty up-to-date

I'm using nvidia's gigabit networking, with the firewall on medium. I've updated the app without a problem. The settings I'm trying to run are 1280x1024 on Quality Settings (application controlled AA, AF).

I get 12k+ on 3DMark 03, and 5500+ on 3DMark 05, so I can't imagine the video being the problem. RAM survived some 5+ hours on prime95 mixed torture.

I've also run the CPU at 110% clock a couple times, but there weren't any problems, certainly nothing to lock up the machine.

I'm not 100% positive, but I think that is the only nvidia card that had problems with this game, but apparently it isn't a big deal to fix, just some settings. Look through the forums for threads titled 6800 or something like that, I know there has been several posts regarding that card, as well as fixes for it. Sorry I can't help, I'm using ATI X800 Pro.

GL!

thats what im using with a P4 2.8 processor and 2 gigs of DDR RAM. i was just curious at what your game settings are, even with all of that, i cant turn the game on very high, dont get me wrong i get way better graphics than i was, but if i turn on the water effects, i hit some crazy lag.

So, I installed the 67.66 beta drivers that the eq2 website pointed me to, but I still had the darkness. When I disabled the nvFirewall, though, it works. Do you know what kind of policies I need to configure so I can play EQ2 with the firewall up? I'm behind a router so it's not a huge deal, but I'd rather not have to worry about connecting directly to the internet later.

Thanks