@Dhruin
Yes, the game does push the system a bit, but I've had a BSOD less than five minutes into the game. They really seem to me to be the result of your second option--a game issue causing a problem with the driver.
The exact error message is something like nv4_displaydll(my card's driver)caught in infinite loop. I'm not completely discounting the heating problem though, since many times the game will run for hours then start to destabilize and crash.
@Gorath--the windows installation is XP service pak 2 regularly updated, but I've been leaving it to the auto-updater so I do need to check and make sure it's completely up to date.(It's a one year old Dell, P4 3.8g, 2gb ram, nvidia7900GTX card)
@Cleric
DirectX is one thing I haven't checked. I think it's 9. something. Is DX10 fairly stable? It seems I've heard something about it being buggy, though maybe that's just with Vista.
Yes, I do have an audio element happening. Tech Support for the game told me to go into dxdiag and adjust hardware acceleration to "basic" and for a few brief hours I thought it was Teh Fix. Alas, at a really inconvenient moment the BSOD rose from it's grave. I am considering completely disabling it.(Hardware acceleration, not my pc , though if there had been a blunt instrument to hand...)
Really, I'm fairly convinced the issue is the game--I've played everything from HoMM5 to NWN2 without a single problem. With this game(it's an expansion, btw--the original game had the same issues for many people til it was patched) I not only have the CTD's, but also many really interesting graphical oddities, like individual tiles turning into transecting bands that start at your characters foot or the top of a landscape feature and crisscross the screen(hard to describe but very dramatic), intermittent flickering(as if the game is lit by a power source about to blow out in the wind) and what I whimsically refer to as The Big Dissolve--where the game resembles one of those B sci-fi action movies where the hero's band has fled an exploding planet and it's being spattered across the galaxy in slow-moving but colorful pieces. I love it when the Tech Support guys tell me to update my drivers.
Anyway, thanks for all the helpful input. I mainly wanted to know if I was inadvertently destroying my computer. I am just going to have to pray that the game has not been abandoned and will be patched...and move on.
@roqua
I wish I could help you, man. Whatever you're describing confused the hell out of me, but it sounds like it sucks.