Video crash issue

[Narcosynthesis]

Hmm, this is a longstanding problem that I'm really starting to get sick of, as it seems to be getting worse.

In certain games after what seems to be a random amount of time, my monitor will flip out, showing multicolored (usually blue and white) boxes. The sound will continue for a few seconds and then start to loop.

UT2k4, 2k3, Farcry, Half-Life, and Quake III engine games seem to run fine.

Neverwinter Nights, Battlefield 42/Vietnam, Max Payne 1/2, and a few others have this problem.

Initial idea was a heat issue, so I used some thermal paste on the video card heatsink and went at it, seemed to stop for a bit, but then returned. Also, if it was a heat issue, I would think Farcry and UT2k4/3 would cause the problem as well, as they are far more graphically intensive than NWN or Max Payne.

This has continued for quite some time.. Probably nearly a year, through every driver update in that time frame. After new drivers it seems to go away for a bit and then come back.

Specs:
Soyo SY-K7V Dragon Plus!
Gainward Geforce ti4200 128MB (stock settings)
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
Western Digital WD800JB (80Gig 7200rpm)
WD200BB (20Gig 5200rpm)
AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (stock settings)
512MB PC2100

Any suggestions?

 

[Narcosynthesis]

Well, I've continued to screw with it.

Disabled Fastwrite
Dropped AGP to 2x
New VIA AGP driver
Cut temp way down

Still no luck, continues to do this shat.

 

[Tordek]

Has this happened always or it began after a while....?

 

[Narcosynthesis]

If I remember correctly (it's been a longass time) it started after I'd had the card for awhile.

But I've had the card for quite a long time, and it's been having this problem for only a portion of that.