So, I've been having a lot of problems with Nvidia drivers as of late.

Now before we go any further here's some relevant information:
GPU: Geforce 9800GTX
MB: Asus Maximus Formula
RAM: 2gb/4gb DDR2-800 (Usually 4Gb, but removed half of it for testing purpose)
OS: WinXP SP3 Professional 32-bit.

Problem: Random crashes, graphical corruption, drivers stopping to work forcing me to reset. No Blue Screens, just black screens.

Stuff I've tried: Removing some of my RAM, testing the RAM that's left with memtest, testing my GPU's memory. In both cases, no errors detected.

Drivers I've tried : 285.58, 290.36, 290.53, 182.06. 290.36 were the worst, 290.53 were slightly better, 285.58 mostly as bad, and 182.06 seem to be stable for the games that work, but so old that any recent game runs like crap or doesn't run at all. (went back to them because I knew they worked well back when they were released, and wanted to make sure that it wasn't just my GPU that was dying)

Now I'm getting REALLY TIRED of uninstalling drivers, sweeping the leftovers with driver sweeper and reinstalling different drivers all the time only to realize they're just as awful as the last bunch. So I'm wondering if anybody as a setup that's very similar to mine (WinXP 32 bit and a 9800 or 8800) and has managed to find relatively recent drivers that work well.

Gonna put back my extra 2gb of RAM in my PC and run memtest on it, so I'll be back in a few hours. Thanks in advance for your help.

Have you tried to downclock the card? (only by small amounts)
You might want to try to increase the clock frequence and decrease the memory clock (on your GFX card).

You should also try to contact the GFX card brand (support site or whatever) and maybe they will make a custom driver for you.
(XFX did this for me a year ago)

First thing I would try, since you've installed different drivers, is to pull the card and clean the edge connector with a pencil eraser. I would also clean the RAM edge connectors since you're in there. If no joy keep looking for other solutions . . . =)

Might blow it out with some canned air prior to a firm re-insertion of the card.

Do you have another video card you can try? Although you've checked the card's memory, it could still be a failing part that's causing the issue. As well, you might be wise to check your PSU. If you're not getting good clean power (or enough power) to your system, it could cause crashes like you describe.

Could you find out the temperatures of your card when it's idle and during heavy load (play a demanding 3D game)?
HWMonitor should be able to tell you that.

Another possibility: maybe the drivers are corrupted or general filesystem corruption? This happened to me at some point, wasn't hardware related at all but just some issues with the libraries installed on the hard drive.
Check your drive for errors and consider doing a fresh complete install of the operating system and the latest gfx driver afterwards.

EDIT:By the way, before you try anything else (after the memory testing at least) take all components out of their sockets on your mainboard (gfx card+RAM, leave the CPU where it is though :P) and clean as much dust as you can out of them, especially the sockets.
Try Stuff's suggestion aswell, put everything back in and make sure everything is well lodged, power cables too.
That rapidly solved my black+blue screen issues in Windows once.
You have 2x2xGB RAM modules? Put them in the right sockets so that they can be operated in dual-channel mode if that wasn't already the case.

I'm using the 258.96 drivers with minimal problems on my system (XP SP3, 8800 GTX)

9800GS user here, running the latest non-beta drivers without any problems (although I am on 7 x64).

Ok so memtest is over, no errors found. Also did more testing with the good old 182.06 drivers and everything seems to be just as stable as when I was using them years ago. The few games that wouldn't start in my previous testing are now fully working after adding back the extra RAM, so the lack of RAM was probably the cause.
I do get lower performance overall, but I'd rather have lower framerates than crashing all the time. Will do further testing but it really looks like a driver issue, and not a hardware one. Forgot to add the my card's temperature always stayed below 70 celcius when I was monitoring it with Nvidia's system tools, so unless the reported temperatures were false, I doubt it's an overheating problem.
Also, nothing in my system is overclocked. Driver corruption is a possibilty, but I always made sure to use driver cleaner/driver sweeper, and only ever had that GPU.
Cleaning my PC would be a pain, but it would probably do some good. I don't think it's the source of my problem though. Did a partial clean-up recently.
Will check my filesystem's integrity later, it never hurts to be sure.

As for the RAM, I used to have 2x2GB in dual-channel, but one of them died recently, so I'm using a wierd setup right now, which I why I suspected RAM at firts.
I'm using some of my brother's old RAM, so I have 1x2GB + 2x1GB. Still, no errors when testing them all together, and my system runs fine, it was only in games that I was having problems. The only other videocard I could try is a Saphire Radeon HD 4850, but that wouldn't be of much use since it wouldn't tell me wether it's the GPU or the drivers that are cause the issues. PSU is a Power & Cooling Silencer 750W that's been running fine for the past 3.5 years. Unless it's starting to fail, it seems unlikely to be the cause of the issues. Any easy way to know if the PSU is starting to give in? That's an interesting suggestion. The GPU is from Asus and it's over 3 years old though. I used those for a while but was having issues in Civ4. Still, I could play for a long while before the issues cropped up so I might give them another try.


Thanks everyone for the suggestions, will keep trying. Next time I have to buy a GPU, It's probably going to be an AMD one.

This program let's you check your GPU memory

http://www.mikelab.kiev.ua/index_en.php?page=PROGRAMS/vmt_en

Sounds bumpgate like though I can't remember if the 9xxx series was part of that debacle *checks* yes it was.
So you know all chips involved in bumpgate have a finite life due to an f' up by NV many years ago the life is in power cycles but it's not that many a couple of k is usually the limit (it was first found in laptops it too a little longer to prove desktop GPU's had the same problem) so it could quite possibly be a faulty gpu if your board was made 2007-9.

My solution was I went AMD this time and am enjoying my 6950 with none of the... quirks my NV system had

Just looked into that bumpgate thing, as I didn't know about it. Now I'm definitely going to switch to AMD for my next GPU.

Edit : And now I've got a weird problem. I've just tried monitoring my GPU's temperature for the first time since reinstalling the 182 drivers, and neither Nvidia's system tools nor HWMonitor will show it. They only show the fan usage in percentage.

Just to troll you a little, I never managed to get the AMD GPU I had to work properly on Vista or 7. :p

My brother has 2 Radeon 4850 working in crossfire in Win7 x64. Only problem we ever had with it was overheating, but blowing off the dust with compressed air fixed that. That's the only problem I've ever had with ATI/AMD GPUs : overheating. Should be able to avoid that with a good cooling solution.

Just tried the 275.33, early tests showed promise but I just got the black screen again in 2 different games. Maybe it's just my card reaching the end of it's life like wodmarach said. I noticed that the complete video failure only happens when I'm running games in fullscreen mode. When in windowed mode, the game just crashes to desktop and after I can't start any other game until I reboot, but at least I don't have to use the reset button.

Also noticed that my card's temperature sometimes rises all the way to 71-72 Celsius when playing, something I never noticed before because the card cools down really fast when idle. I'll try doing a more thorough cleanup to see if it helps. If it's really a bumpgate problem, trying to keep the temperatures below 70 should help extend my GPU's life a bit.

Edit: Dusted off my GPU and increased fan speeds a bit using EVGA Precision to keep the temperature below 70. I think I'll keep using the 275.33 drivers for now. They crash once in a while but as long as I'm playing in windowed mode it's manageable, and the performance is good. If I get tired of them I guess I'll go back to 258.96. Thanks again for all the tips and suggestions, wish I could mark all posts as the solution, since you were all helpful.