I need help with this to; always have to do a hard reboot.

By the way: XP, Nvidia 7600gs 2gbs ram

Yea I get the same stuff, with pretty much any mods, just more so with FS... 7800 GTX

"Munchkin: One who, on being told that this is a game about politics and intrigue in 17th century Italy, asks to play a ninja."
— Andrew Rilstone

I started having the issue where about 3 minute intervals of good gameplay and then freeze. But I started waiting and sure enough 30 seconds into the freeze the sound locks and loops in very short cycles ( like .5 sec ) then after 30 seconds of this, it frees up and runs another few minutes before repeating. I was also getting weird texture problems now and then that I hadnt seen before.
Before outright replacement, I solved the issue by cooling the GPU better. I think the game just heats up graphics cards if you run them rich, and like an engine, you must either cool it or throttle back. I think the issue is from too many cheap pie cards being sold and poor installation environments and they just fritz out after a while. Dont tell me you dont buy cheap pie cards because when you shop by price, yer gonna get some cheap pie something. I do it, I look at the price and decide ultimately, so im not a cheap pie but a cheap pie skimmer, bordering on frugality.

"The victorious win the battle, then go out to fight ... while the defeated go out to fight, then try to win the battle.   -SunTzu
"The only difference between a capitalist and a communist is that the communist hates competition!" -Circuit