Cannot restart PC without reinstalling GFX drivers in safemode due to freeze at login

My PC is problematic in general, but for the last two months I have to reinstall my graphics drivers whenever I restart my PC due to a freeze caused during the 'welcome to windows' music after logging in.

My graphics card was purchased in February last year, and is an XFX GeForce 7600GT AGP 256MB - I have tried this with a variety of drivers (XFX UK, XFX US, nVidia US, nVidia UK, Omega, Original drivers) and the problem is always the same:

I load up the PC, and everything is fine until it comes to the black screen with the windows logo and loading bar; it'll hang for a second, and a series of graphic tears appear horizontally in various places over the screen. It then goes to the login screen, and upon logging in, I hear the music, which will within a second or two start looping as the PC locks up. Sometimes the screen stays there, but most the time a graphic tear similar to that in the loading screen maps the entire monitor in some bizarre collage.

When I reinstall the graphics driver via Driver Cleaner Pro in Safe Mode (And restarting before reinstalling), the PC will boot up fine in normal mode for the first time (though the black-load screen tear appears), but if I restart it, the tearing and freezes appear again.

When no graphics drivers are installed, I have no problems booting in normal mode.

Could this be yet another sign of my graphics card being on it's last legs? Coupled with the various other problems I have had with it over the year with regards to nv4_disp.dll BSoDs?

I'm not too keen on pinning it down to virus, as it seems to be entirely driver related.

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If it helps at all, since this problem appeared:

Battlefield 2 sometimes fails to successfully log in, and just hangs; I can still speak/hear on TeamSpeak, but no means of closing BF2.exe work; Alt + F4, Esc, Alt + Tab, Ctrl + Alt + Del, nothing - Have to restart, and bam I hit the problem.

When scrolling down webpages using my middle-mouse button pressed in (For the auto-scroll), a strange cyan coloured vertical line appears about 3/5ths across the page, breaking the line in certain places.