GL Kills my box?

[Adam Cooper]

I have been trying to get an opengl game (vegastrike) to run on my
system. However whilst i've been trying to get this to work i seem to
have lost all opengl capabilities. When running any opengl app the
computer immediately freezes with no output to screen. Being a relative
newb i have no idea how to exit said freeze (ctrl alt F* doesn't get me
anywhere) and so i have to restart. GLXGears as well as tux racer freeze
as well. How can I fix this problem? Are there any logs that may be of
use? 

I'm running Kernel 2.6 on a P4 2.6 512MB

Thanks for any help.
Adam