i fixed mine (crosses fingers) by doing the following:

upgraded to the new detonator 40 drivers, they seem to kick ass.
disabled nvidia driver help service.
disabled "nwiz.exe /install" that runs on startup. - no idea what it does, but i killed it anyway :)

seems to be pretty damn stable :)

I think XP is the best and most stable MS OS to date, from my experience :)

I agree wholeheartedly

THE SOLUTION TO GEFORCE CARDS
 

Ladies and gents, as we all know, there is a major problem with GeForce video cards and Windows XP. The first ones to notice this problem were the GTA3 players, who got yellow stripes instead of words in the game's menus. Therefore, everyone is advised to search for a file called Q306676_WXP_SP1_x86_ENU.exe, which is an official Microsoft patch for WinXP and Nvidia cards. It is somewhere on the Microsoft site and on different GTA3 related sites. Simply run it, and the problems should be solved. Have fun.

hmmm....strange files from strange people...

/me downloads and installs it :)