I have a similar issue. I have a ATI 5850, I have literally replaced every single part in my computer, only to continually get a "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" I know Vista as well as Windows 7 have had issues with this. I believe it is their timeout detection and recovery. I am just unsure how to turn it off. I have gone to other threads like this:
Timeout Detection and Recovery of GPUs through WDDM
But I would just like step by step instructions on how to disable the timeout detection through the registry editor.