Ok, I was happily playing Oblivion yesterday, I'd just installed a couple of quest mods (the Elder Council and Origin of the mages guild), just minding my own business when suddenly my screen goes black. Then it comes back. Then it goes black again. Then it comes back again. An endless cycle became apparent. When I'd move the mouse, the glimpses of game in between the blackness showed the movement so the game was functioning on some level, albeit not a playable one.
I hit Control+Alt+Delete and started task manager to close the game and when I did I got a message saying something to the effect of "The display driver was not responding and has recovered". I thought this might have been an isolated event so I restarted the game and sure enough, it did it again. I quit and restarted the whole computer and that solved the problem for about 6 hours or so then it started all over.
I have updated my videocard drivers recently and everything so I have no idea what the problem could be. Does anybody else have any ideas?

I saw that message before, just don't remember if was with the ATI or nvidia, normally it recover going into software acceleration mode, not useful to play and so restarting windows is the only way, indeed.
There is not enough information to start with. By the symptoms seems a hardware problem, maybe overheating.

I have a GeForce 8800 GTX. I thought it might be overheating at first so I hooked up an extra fan to blow on the back of the cpu. That was during the uneventfull 6 hour period where I could play no problem. Then it did it again. It's not just Oblivion either. It did a similar thing while I was playing Dawn of War: Soulstorm. I just bring it up in these forums because people here seem to be more knowledgeable. Whatever the problem is I'd like to fix it before my graphics card takes any permanent damage.

well i got that message one time and one time only while i was playing sins of a solar empire. What i am going to tell you has nothing to do with that though really.

What that message means is that your vid card had to much activity and had to stop, and restart. it might not have been overheated, it could have just been to much using ram. I dont know what mods you use ( hi-rez texutres albiet ) but if you use alot of cosmetic mods ( beauty pack, Better NPC's, TNR, Quarls Texture pack, Hi rez grass, or whatever ) that can secretly ( without you noticing ) take a hit on your ram during play, and cause your display driver to quit working temporarily.

My advice is next time you find yourself bored as hell.....Back up your computer, RE-BOOT the harddrive, and start fresh, dont add a bunch of crap your not gonna use but maybe once anyway. Keep your computer clean. Monitor where your usage is coming from and end those respective programs during play, or if possible delete them if you can

Many things can cause it, could even be dust on your video card. What the message means though is your video card is not going, it just quit and had to recover. Its not a MAJOR error, you might have already have fixed the issue, but if it keeps occuring even after you shutdown your computer for a cooldown, it might mean the video card is going out.

I hope it's not going out, I just bought it last August.

Thanks for all of the info, I rolled back my forceware driver to the previous version and that seems to have stopped the problem for now. Fingers crossed. I appreciate the information though as I'm not very knowledgeable with computers. I can build and paint a model like you wouldn't believe but when it comes to complicated electronics I'm hopeless.