Bootcamp & Windows XP video corruption

I'm running Windows XP SP3 on my MacBook Pro (Bootcamp). I'm having this awful problem with video corruption. Take a look at this image:



When this happens:

- While working in any application (Photoshop, Modo, Word, etc.)
- When display dims according to power settings
- When screensaver activates
- Completely randomly (I tried just booting up, logging in and leaving the laptop running without any interaction on my part)

Things I've tried to eliminate this problem:

- Turn off screensaver
- Disable power features
- Install the latest video driver (Nvidia Geforce 8600m GT)
- Install older video drivers

Like I said, this happens whether or not I interact with the laptop - even with all power saving features and screen saver off. Also, when the screen goes all wacky like this, the system is totally locked and won't recover - I need to force it to shutdown by holding down the power button. This problem is not present when booting into the Mac partition.

Any clues? Any other system info I should provide? Please help!

try booting into safe mode and roll back all the drivers, that might work. Maybe others have some ideas of how to repair this problem. But the worst case is a reinstall of windows maybe.

OK, I'll try that and see what happens.

I don't know if rolling back the nVidia driver is going to work seeing how you've already tried an older driver. And, since you've also tried the latest nVidia driver and that didn't work, it may be a configuration problem.

Open (while you're in Windows) the nVidia control panel and make sure you have the resolution and refresh rates set correctly. Resolution should be set to the native resolution of your MBP and refresh set to 60 Hz.

Also make sure Windows is correctly identifying your graphics adapter. I know that should be a given, but I've seen stranger things happen in Windows.

Something else to check is DirectX. Run the DirectX diagnostic tests when in Windows. From START, select RUN. Type in "dxdiag" without the quotes and follow the diagnostics interactively.

Regards.