My friend has a PCI Winmodem which seems to be causing problems with game controllers only when playing online. It eventually got down to on-site tech support and they recommended the purchase of an external modem. I don't know why they specified external instead of hardware except maybe because all externals are hardware. The CPU is a P3 500 and the modem is based on a Conexant (formerly part of Rockwell) chip. I recall vaguely from back in the day that Winmodems use something like 12% of a P200. In any case, is it really possible that this is the problem and if so why was this major manufacturer willing to save $5-10 at the expense of a basic function of a home PC? And why not at least arrange an "upgrade" swap at cost or something now that the problem has been discovered (it's still under warranty).