Games locking up/crashing

[-ROCKY-]

I dont know if this should go in this section whatever.

Ok, so a couple of days ago I was playing World Of Warcraft normally, then suddenly the whole screen locked up, there were weird vertical lines/dots and colours all over the screen but the sound was still playing then suddenly stopped and started looping then stopped again, I couldnt Alt Tab out or do anything, all that was left was too reboot, this now happens on ALL games, I have the latest drivers installed, today I have been trying to see if it worked again with different results, its always the same crash but sometimes my monitor just turns itself off and wont come on and I have to reboot,

Also the first time it crashed I was getting slowdown and artifacts on the desktop , today the same crashes have been happening but I waited and a message box came up faintly saying Display Driver Stopped Responding..there was more text but I couldnt see it because the ultra large text and messed up graphics, , my monitor is a quite old one but I dont see how that can be the problem, I have no idea what I can do or what is going wrong.

I have uploaded a small video so you can see what the lock ups look and sound like here zSHARE - mvi_0536.avi

System

AMD 3200+ CPU at 2.2Ghz
ASUS A7N8X-E motherboard
1024MB Ram (2x512)
Nvidia Geforce 6600GT 128MB graphics card
Audigy ZS sound card

Graphics card Drivers

Forceware Release 163 - UK version
Version 163.71
Release date - 28.9.2007



Any help/advice would be appreciated

[b1gapl]

There could be a couple of reasons.

Try reinstalling your GFX drivers.

And it could be that, your GFX card is overheating. Try monitoring it, with Everest. Or look in Nvidia's control panel, if it shows up.

[Schecters]

Yeah it sounds like overheating. Did you by chance overclock your video card?

Get a can of compressed air and clean out the heatsink and fan on your card. Dust builds up over awhile and if it's really bad I guess it could cause severe heating problems.

[BlueHeaven]

I used to use that same vid card (the 6600GT) on my old pc, and it used to overheat and lock up. I would download Rivatuner or another program of your liking and monitor the temps while playing. One thing I found that kept the temps lower was to decrease the game quality. I played Guild Wars, so when I had the video settings at Max I would start to overheat, but setting them Med-Low I was fine.