@Sulio: No luck here! :( Can you send me your (cracked) AVP(G).EXE, in an E-mail attachment or via Web upload, so that I can try it? Thanks!

Hm, i installed
84.21_forceware_winxp2k_international_whql
and now all is fine

Yeah, I just tried it on my about 5 year old PC (Intel P4 2 GHz, ATI Radeon 7000, video drivers from 2005 November) and it definitely works under Windows XP.

Another, similarly strange experience is when Blood 2 didn't work anymore (still under Windows 98): the main menu was blinking (bad double bufferring?). It turned out that newer nVidia Detonator drivers behaved differently than older ones... Great! <sigh>