Games Freeze on Startup

Hello, I'm having a problem where any 3D game will freeze up the moment I launch the game.  I've had a problem for a long time where certain games, such as Grand Theft Auto III won't start because I get an error message that the game requires at least 16MB of video memory (even though I have 128MB).  And with 3D games that do work, I get lots of little white dots all over the screen.  My graphics card manufacturer says there is no problem with my card, and I also get the problem with the white dots with another 64MB card, but 3D games like GTA III will work fine with that card.  I ignored these problems for about a year but now it's gotten to the point where games won't start up at all.  I have tried replacing the motherboard, RAM, video card, and monitor with no success.  Any help/ideas anyone has would be greatly appreciated.

System specs:
Intel Pentium 4 2.2 GHz processor
Albatron GeForce 4 Ti4280 graphics card
1024 MB Kingston PC3200 HyperX RAM
Asus P4P800 Deluxe motherboard
Maxtor 120GB hard drive

what directx are you running? anyway type dxdiag in the run box it will tell you more and you have mention everything but the o/s?

DirectX is 9.0b and the OS is Windows XP Home.

what results does you get from dxdiag?and are the drivers up to date.And what error messages--like stop?

I've tested both the DirectDraw and Direct3D on the dxdiag screen and both tests show nothing is wrong.   My drivers are up to date.  When I try to start up a game, the game starts, goes black, then takes me back to my desktop and is locked up for about 30 seconds before it will let me use ctrl-alt-del to shut down the game.  I never get any error messages.  However, one time when this happened I got a message "Device failure detected".  

have you tried the patch>http://www.gbase.ch/index.asp?zone=pc&target=patches&id=12620   and are there any problems have a look in the device manager just wondering on the cdrom drive?

Yes, this problem is happened with every game, not just GTA III.  Games that have worked fine for the past year just stopped working 3 days ago.  I've tried doing a system restore but that didn't help, which is why I think this is a hardware problem.

The device manager shows no problems with the CD-ROM drive.  

have a look in the events log?you can find it in control/panel admin/tools events viewer as you have said its something to do with hardware<graphics card> try unistalling it from the device manager and re-boot then shut down and remove it from the pc* CAUTION IS NEEDED HERE* and then re-boot then shutdown replace the card and re-boot  i know it a long process but win will clear out irq and reassign a new one when its replaced but try to save your graphics drivers before doing this and dont panic and it may or may not work but its worth a shot..good luck ok