Video blacks out occasionally for a few seconds

Not as excited now about my replacement computer now, since this is such a ongoing problem.  My computer did all this with freezing directly out of the box and Dell has sent me a replacement computer, but it looks like it will probably act up the same. Has anyone tried the newest version of nvidia drivers 257.21 Are  they more improved? Hate that I finally buy a new computer based on the feedbacks and what was in it to get a dud, now I wish I just would have went with the IMac.

i have a 240 same problem and/or message re kernal have updated to 257.38 at dell same prob, will go to nvia next for driver

I have a 435MT with the GT 220 and when I watch a movie on my tv (via HDMI), I get that 2 - 3 second black out screen, but when I look at the computer monitor (connected DVI), it doesn't experience this blackout.  

Please note, this happens for both streaming video or downloaded video.

Just awesome viewing experience!!!

Briefly, same setup,  was becoming worse, updated to an nvidia quadro 2000 (justified, I thought :), as I use my machine for FEM modelling), reinstalled everything from scratch on a new HDD, and life is good.  Still have the previous system on the old HDD, so will plug that in again tomorrow and boot off of that to see how it goes with teh new vid. card. 

Summary -  the 220 is awful, updated drivers, rolled back drivers, clean installs...  blah. So many wasted hours, system has been unreliable for months therefore, it hasn't been earning it's keep.

Only thing I can think of was that I 'think' that the system became unstable after a certain Windows 7 software update late last year. More recent video drivers meant that at least the system didn't dump and restart, but crashing graphics are still a pain and totally unnecessary.

Fingers crossed this continues to work, or else I have an expensive door stop & next time I'll put my money into a proper workstation.

I just wanted to throw out there that this "screen blacks out" problem is not necessarily limited to nVidia graphics cards (or there may be multiple causes).

I have (had) a Dell Dimension 8400 in which I upgraded the video card recently to a Radeon HD 4350 so I could connect the PC to my Vizio HDTV via HDMI.  After I did this, occasionally (but not horribly frequently) the screen would completely go black for a few seconds, then come back all by itself.  Never got any error messages.  It did seem to happen more frequently playing games, but I don't recall it being limited to games (or any one game).  It is annoying, but doesn't happen enough to really tick me off.

Just this week though, I got a new Dell Inspiron 620 that (currently) only has the onboard Intel HD graphics.  Again using the HDMI interface to connect to my Vizio TV, the screen has blacked out in the same way a time or two.  Always comes back by itself, no error messages, no reboots required.