3d games crash: Cursor moves, everything else freezes.

[dracleath]

So, I've been having this bizarre problem. I'm using a T42 with an ATI 9600 mobility in it. It seems that every time I play certain 3d games (civilization 4, galactic civilizations 2), after 4 or 5 minutes the game freezes, but the cursor can still move. Nothing else responds, and clicking on something doesn't change anything. This lasts 30 or 40 seconds until VPUrecover kicks in or the system just reboots.

I took it in to a hardware center, they ran tests (not sure specifically which ones) and said the graphics card and motherboard check out fine, and that it might be a driver issue. I tried several driver versions, official, ati reference, omega, all of them have the same problem. I've even reinstalled windows since this started happening, with no change. What's odd is that I've heard of this exact problem occuring with the linux drivers, and there's a simple fix, but I've never seen any reference to it occuring in windows.

Anyone ever had this problem before and know if there's something I can tweak/ect to fix it?