Screen goes blank, computer stops during game

[Gatika]

This message is actually on behalf of my brother:

While he's playing particular computer games (Warcraft, Dungeon Lords) the monitor goes blank or occasionally displays distorted vertical bands of colour, and stays that way until my brother reboots. Sometimes when the monitor is blank, the music from the game can still be heard for a few minutes, but then shuts down as well. The computer was purchased as individual components and assembled by him, and seems to function fine in all other respects. And curiously, this problem never happens when he plays Starcraft.

Here's his specs:

AMD Athalon processor, 1.1 Ghrtz
MSI motherboard (he doesn't remember any of the specs for this - it's about 4 years old)
256 Radeon ATI graphics card
1 Gig RAM
Windows XP Home Edition

Any idea what could be causing this? Thanks!

[Flame]

It sounds like he needs to update his video card drivers.  

Flame

[GX1_Man]

or just play Starcraft.  

[Gatika]

He's had Starcraft for too long...he's getting a little tired of it.  

But a foolproof suggestion, nontheless.  

He's gonna try the driver thing.