Crashing no matter what (Vista/Nvidia)

I posted in the official thread, but I see most people suggest you just make your own thread, so here it is.

Basic system info: Q6600, gf8800gt (heatsink replaced), Vista64 SP2.

My story so far: I just started playing this again a week or two ago, after a 2 year break. I would get the Nvidia 14 error, or the plain old driver failure error (with the ! in the system tray). At this time I just had Vista64, I hadn't upgraded to SP2 yet, and was running fairly new drivers, 180 or so.

Step1: Upgrade to newest drivers, 185 put out a few days ago. No change.
Step2: Use the hotfix suggested in the official thread. Applied it successfully, no change.
Step3: Found SP2 rtf, the actual release on bittorrent, and installed that. No change.
Step4: Rollback drivers to 169.25. Still crash with the same frequency and timing, but the error changed to some generic C++ error.
Step5: Attempted 3rd party Omega 169.25 drivers. No change.
Step6: Switched back to Nvidia's 169.25 drivers. Disabled visual themes for City of Heroes.exe, and tried compatibility mode for WindowsXP. No change.

The crashes typically happen within 15 minutes of starting the game, one time it crashed before I could finish summoning my minions on my mastermind. Screen goes gray or black, error pops up, and I close it.

My driver installation procedure was like this: Uninstall drivers, reboot into safe mode, use the suggested Driversweeper to clean up the remain of the old drivers, reboot into normal, install the new drivers, reboot, test out game.

I'm really running out of ideas as to what I should do in this situation. Here is my info... any ideas?

Edit: According to ATITool, a heat monitor, the gf8800gt never went over 59c the entire time I was playing. It was steady the entire time, so it wasn't triggered by a hot graphics card. Managed about an hours worth of playing maybe this last time, before crashing.

---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.1.1.7---

DxDiag gathered at May 9, 2009 20:12 (+08:00)
Operating System: Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6002) Service Pack 2 (6002.lh_sp2rtm.090410-1830)
System Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model: P35C-DS3R
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Central Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory: 4094MB
.Net Memory Report: 2618MB out of 4093MB available
Page File: 6611MB (1811MB currently in use)
C Drive: (WDC WD5000AAKS-00YGA0 ATA Device) 266878MB out of 476937MB (55%) free
D Drive: (LITE-ON DVDRW LH-20A1S ATA Device) zero-size drive
E Drive: (QG2544G OGJ553O SCSI CdRom Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 10
DirectX Diag version: 6.00.6001.18000 (64-bit version)

Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.

No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.

Monitor: SyncMaster 226BW(Digital)
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
Manufacturer / Chip: NVIDIA / GeForce 8800 GT
Video Memory: 2266 MB
Driver Version: 7.15.0011.6925
Driver Date: 12/11/2007 5:06:00 PM
Driver Language: English

Sound Device Description: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
Driver File: HdAudio.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.6002.18005
Driver Date: 4/10/2009 10:39:52 PM

Sound Device Description: Digital Output Device (SPDIF) (High Definition Audio Device)
Driver File: HdAudio.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.6002.18005
Driver Date: 4/10/2009 10:39:52 PM


WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: P35C-DS3R
Motherboard Version:
BIOS Manufacturer: Award Software International, Inc.
BIOS Name: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
BIOS Version: GBT - 42302e31
BIOS Release: 20071029000000.000000+000

Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1680x1050
3D Resolution: 1680x1050 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: Yes
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: Yes

Physics Quality: High
Maximum Particles: 50000
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No

Anti-aliasing: 4x
Anisotropic Filtering: 4x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: High Quality
Bloom: 1.000 (turned on)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: High

World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 2.000
Entity Detail Level: 2.000
Shadows Enabled: Yes
Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
Suppression of Extra Player FX Enabled: No
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: No
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes

Audio Mode: Performance
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 1.000
Music Sound Volume: 0.000

Show Advanced Graphics Options: Yes
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.600
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: 184159 bytes/second
Current Game Version: 18.20090422.2T
Installation Directory: C:\games\City of Heroes

Mod files in the Data directory
No modifications found

Heat was my first guess - but obviously not the graphic card.
Have you tried to monitor the CPU too?

Or maybe it could be faulty RAM. You could try Memtest to see if any errors show up.

My CPU shouldn't be having a problem, it's not overclocked, and I even replaced the stock cooler with a really high quality one with a fat fan on it.

I've used this computer for a year and a half now, and no other games have had this kind of problem. I'll run memtest though just to rule out possibilities.

[ QUOTE ]
Edit: According to ATITool, a heat monitor, the gf8800gt never went over 59c the entire time I was playing. It was steady the entire time, so it wasn't triggered by a hot graphics card.

[/ QUOTE ]
!?!? Steady? How do you go from desktop to playing a game and keep the temperature steady? It should definitely go up.

The driver is dying so I don't think memtest will find much, though it could be the memory on the card itself. I've got no clue how to test that.

Be sure to start a ticket in game, too, to let the official NCSoft help have a crack at this. They'll make you go through some made-for-computer-illiterate scripts but eventually you will get through all the scripts and fall into the hands of the ace techs. (You must execute certain rites to see the Grand Masters, you know. You're lucky they don't make you sacrifice a goat. )

Oh, by steady I meant steady in the game. The game only caused my card to rise by 5c or so, but once in game it was always 58 or 59c. No spikes or anything that would trigger a shutdown.

Welp I somehow fixed this.

It was some combination of closing the sidebar, disabling visual themes, and disabling desktop composition in the compatibility menu. Also in game I set my graphics down from 200% to 100%, lowered some of the textures from very high to high, and set the physx from High to Medium (or low don't remember).

Some combination thereof let me play for about 4 hours without a crash. This is all with the old 169.25 drivers.

Actually today it crashed once, same error as before. So it's not 100%, but it's a little more tolerable.