Um mind if i hitch along this post? i think i'm having the same problem, newbie here:
mine isn't a black screen lock-up, but quite similar, mine looks more like a screen distortion, (specs on my pc, core 2 duo 2.93ghz, 3.50gb of ram, nvdia gforce 9500gt) does that quadro settings work with me? maybe you could give me proper settings to rid of this issue

(oh had this problem before, tweak my 3d settings, googled the problem, saw a site that posted that, can't seem to find it anymore )

thanks in advance to anyone who can help