Repeated, periodic freezes

[verti]

recently installed a new game, NWN2.  Played fine for about 10 hours.  Now, with this game and several other full screen games, I get periodic screen lock ups.  Ever 20 seconds or less, the screen will lock up entirely.  Sound will continue to play for several seconds, then stop, then start again, and in a few more seconds the screen will unreeze - this behavior repeats ad-nauseum.  After messing around with this for several hours, it has evolved to causing blue screens when I try to close the offending game.  I downloaded and used window's diagnostic utility to examine the error log from the crash, and the suggested cause was graphics driver error.

Steps I've taken:
Downloaded, fully updated, and full computer virus scan with AVG free edition.
Downloaded and installed latest graphics drivers(GeForce 7600GT)*
Downloaded and used SpeedFan - see additional comments
Closed all other programs running in the background

*I'm reasonably confident that the update process worked - I did uninstall old drivers first, etc - however, my system information window reports that I am actually using drivers from july 2007 ... even the drivers I replaced were more recent than this, so I'm a bit at a loss

-Speedfan ... reports my PC temp at -64C ... I think this is obviously false, but I'm concerned that the temperature is +64C which as I understand it is high, and this is just idling/surfing the web, so in game it could be getting critically high.

Any thoughts? Other things to check/try?

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

I would check out the temperature first. This is usually the problem with most gamers.

-Speedfan ... reports my PC temp at -64C ... I think this is obviously false, but I'm concerned that the temperature is +64C which as I understand it is high, and this is just idling/surfing the web, so in game it could be getting critically high.

What is the temperature during gameplay?

Try putting an external fan next to the computer and see how well it fairs.

[verti]

Yeah ... that does seem like it.  Bizarre though, as it played fine for so long, and it is now cooler around this area than it was during those 10 hours I played before.  I'm going to try and vacuum out all the dust that I can an try again - but temperature spiked to 85 when the game loaded, which I'm sure is way too high.  And that was with a handheld fan right next to the card. (The GPU temperature, that is).

I guess if cleaning doesn't work, it's time to get a new card?

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

I'm going to try and vacuum out all the dust that I can an try again

DO NOT VACUUM THE COMPUTER

http://www.computerhope.com/cleaning.htm

[verti]

Well, I didn't go at the individual components with the vacuum, but got mostly the bottom of case and around some fans.  Hopefully I didn't do any more damage  .  But, I did discover that 3 of the capcitors on the graphics card had ruptured, so needless to say, I'm working on getting a new one.  Thanks for your help!

[Broni]

Good you checked, because with 85C, something would get fried pretty soon.