Graphics Crash

Hey guys. I looked all over the first couple of pages to find a similar problem to mine, and not having much luck.

Basically what's happening is my game is crashing to the point of locking up my PC. It seems to be graphics related because of all the wonderful artifacts that appear on screen when it happens, but my machine is not immediately disabled when it does. I've taken some screen shots for you.

First it looks like this.
http://img843.imageshack.us/i/img20100917195218.jpg/

If I leave it alone it will progress to this.
http://img543.imageshack.us/i/img20100917133650.jpg/

Then this
http://img337.imageshack.us/i/img20100918094749.jpg/

This only happens in City of Heroes. Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Starcraft 2, and World of Warcraft both run fine on maximum settings for hours on end. I have a lot of other games I could test this on, but those three are the top 3 played for me.

I'm not aware if it's important or not, but that cave mission where you take out Sapphus seems to kick me to those screens right away. The other character didnt experience that until after several minutes of playing.

Also, I'm running a GeForce GTX280 graphics card. Unless they updated the drivers for it last night, I know the drivers are the latest. I updated them the first time this happened.

Lastly, I believe you like CoXHelper reports, so here
---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.2.0.2---

DxDiag gathered at September 18, 2010 10:09 (-05:00)
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_gdr.100618-1621)
System Manufacturer: INTEL_
System Model: DP45SG
BIOS: BIOS Date: 05/15/08 22:34:38 Ver: 08.00.10
Central Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 @ 2.83GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
Memory: 4096MB
.Net Memory Report: 2823MB out of 4091MB available
Page File: 6709MB (1472MB currently in use)
C Drive: (SAMSUNG HD103UJ ATA Device) 791894MB out of 953766MB (83%) free
D Drive: (ATAPI iHAS224 A ATA Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 11
DirectX Diag version: 6.01.7600.16385 (64-bit version)

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

No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.

Monitor:
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280
Manufacturer / Chip: NVIDIA / GeForce GTX 280
Video Memory: 2795 MB
Driver Version: 8.17.12.5896
Driver Date: 7/9/2010 5:38:00 PM
Driver Language: English

Sound Device Description: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
Driver File: HdAudio.sys
Driver Version: 6.01.7600.16385
Driver Date: 7/13/2009 7:07:00 PM

Sound Device Description: Digital Audio (S/PDIF) (High Definition Audio Device)
Driver File: HdAudio.sys
Driver Version: 6.01.7600.16385
Driver Date: 7/13/2009 7:07:00 PM


WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: Intel Corporation
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: DP45SG
Motherboard Version: AAE27733-403
BIOS Manufacturer: Intel Corp.
BIOS Name: BIOS Date: 05/15/08 22:34:38 Ver: 08.00.10
BIOS Version: INTEL - 83
BIOS Release: 20080819000000.000000+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: No


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


Anti-aliasing: Off
Anisotropic Filtering: 4x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: None
Bloom: 1.000 (turned on)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: Medium?


World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 1.000
Entity Detail Level: 1.000
Shadows Enabled: Yes
Shadow Mode: Shadow maps
Shadow Map Shader: Low quality
Environmental Reflections: Low quality
Advanced Occlusion Settings: No
Ambient Occlusion: High performance
Occlusion Strength: Slight
Blur: Fast
Ambient Resolution: High performance


Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
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: 1.000

Show Advanced Graphics Options: Yes
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.250
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: 934887 bytes/second
Current Game Version: 1850.201007290124.28T4
Installation Directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\City of Heroes

Mod files in the Data directory
No modifications found

what you can do is try an older driver set and see if that changes anything. also, make sure that all the dust is cleaned out of your comp. and everything is spinning ok.

I was having a ton of graphics problems as well - until I turned off Ultra mode. After that - not a crash.