I'm not sure where to look for this issue; every once in a while (not very often) while I'm playing a game I get lots of weird visuals happening. I get what I call "horizontal snow" on my screen (lines like - - -- ), meaning the lines move and disappear and reappear. Also there are random flashes like lightning.

When I exit the game, I get the same thing on my desktop.

The problem is fixed with a restart. Then I can go days or weeks before it happens again.

Any suggestions as to what the problem might be? Should I be really that concerned where it resolves upon reboot and may not appear again for weeks (despite heavy gaming)?

My system: amdx2 4200, 256m bfg oc'd 8600gt (latest nvidia drivers), 2gig ddr2 ram, msi k9agm2 motherboard, and running vista home premium.

my guess is the same issu i have. its vista.
we all have to accecpt that. i refuse to accecpt it. but we do. lol also it could possabably be the video cardits self going funny because it is a OC card

I suppose it could be Vista, or an nvidia vista driver issue. No way to tell really, at least I don't think there is (unless any other possibility gets ruled out).

I was wondering if temperature could be an issue, since there's only stock air cooling in my system (except for a coolermaster cpu fan) and the stock air cooling on the 8600gt.

I'll have to do a search around on bfg/nvidia and see if anyone else has this issue with the bfg 8600gt oc.

could be heat related. U can try with the side off you tower if possible, and maybe have a house fan blowing air on the vid card. keep fan on low speed though.