nVidia 8600 GTS Problem

Hi everyone, thanks in advance for helping a guy out. I'm so close to putting an axe through the monitor. Here's what's happening.

I'm playing COD4 and the game freezes. I get boxes of color like old school Nintendo games, the sound loops, and the system stops responding.

Give it a few minutes and Windows comes back on, my resolution is now 640x480, and my color down to 16-bit. There's an error that says something like: "The nv4 disp driver has stopped working normally..."

Here's what I have tried:
- 3 different sets of drivers. (One that came with the video card, the latest one, and the one before that, always doing it clean, registry and all)
- Checked system temp right after (Normal, around 42C)
- Uninstalled/reinstalled the game

Some other facts:
- I set the game to "optimal settings". Didn't increase anything.
- Tomb Raider: Anniversary works just fine without any crashes
- This is only on single player. Haven't tried multiplayer just yet.
- Relatively new rig (a little over a month old)
- Didn't tweak anything, no OCing of any kind

System specs:
OS: Windows XP Pro, SP2
Proc: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.00 GHz)
Memory: Kingston 2MB DDR2 (1 stick)
Mobo: MSI P35 Neo (v1.2)
Video: Inno3d iChill nVidia 8600 GTS 256MB DDR3 (But on DXDIAG it says 512, I think this is because of the TurboCache feature)
Video Driver: 6.14.0011.7519
Direct X: 9.0c

Appreciate the help, guys. Thanks.

 

What's the psu make & model?

I'd start fresh: clear cmos, load bios defaults, run memtest for 5+ passes, run "easy cleaner" to clean the registry in windows, install the latest driver, run 3dmark in a loop overnight. If there's any error, post it here and the program name.

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

 

HEC 500w. Guess I'll give that a go. Thanks akhilles.

 

Also have you updated all patches for COD4 from their site, can make a big difference sometimes. Maybe try lowering the settings in game and see if it plays for longer.

 

Yep, all patched up. Doesn't crash on safe mode (640x480, everything set to low) but I'm pretty sure my GPU can handle at the very least, 800x600 right?