I need some differentiation here. You talk about lockups, pauses, and mini-freezes.
A lockup, to me, requires a hard reboot to get back to the Windows desktop. These are almost always driver related.
A pause. The game stops for a split second (or a little more) then continues normally. No input required. These are almost always resource related.
Mini-freeze requires input to continue. These are also almost always driver related.
When I say 'almost always', I am talking about the odds if it being the issue. It does not preclude something else form being the problem.'
NVidia drivers are a bag of worms anymore. I have ne user who had hard lockups until her reverted to the latest 8x.xx drivers. You say they cause you problems. but the drivers he was lokcing up on are the ones you say work better. Nothing I detest more in a computer than inconsistent hardware/drivers. It is also why I do not document which is the *best* driver for any given video card.
In general, the output of the DXDIAG is needed to make a good guess for any of these types of issues. Shoot me an email.
