Games open then crash during play - doh

This has been an on going thing since I got a new Motherboard in June06, and replaced memory, and game card.

Anyway what happens is the game (name one) crashes to an error report - send/don't send - on Windows (XP).

Now I have run all sorts of tests (checked msconfig and dxdiag) and all come back that everything is okee-dokee, no problems.

But, the other day I ran something that said that Direct Draw was "OFF", or atleast some portion of it - but Direct Draw says it is just fine thank you very much.
Settings seem fine, but what do I know.

1) could it be the Motherboard?
2) where do I go to turn on all aspects of Direct Draw?
3) could it possibly be the CD-RW Drive? Heats the CDs up pretty good.

Note: no other problems, except with games. gah! Damn, Gremlins.

This thread has some links to several versions of memtest if you scroll down a bit. I would use it to test your RAM, it might be faulty.