NVidia Beta Driver Corruption (Beta 295.51)

As if I hadn't had enough problems lately with my PC, mainly Skyrim, I was just browsing the Net (Bethsoft forums actually) and my screen went all shades of pink and froze.  At first I could move the cursor but not actually click on anything.  Naturally I thought "Oh hell, dead graphics card," but since rebooting and entering the details in Google I came up with this.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=222077&st=20

Co-incidentally, I had installed the latest beta drivers which are 295.51, the subject of the above forum page link so it seems it is a driver issue as it's happening to others using the same driver.  Hopefully, my card is safe.  I was starting to feel like someone had put a curse on me...lol.

There's a screen shot of exactly the same thing that happened to me on that page.  I had also been using Firefox which is my default browser and I also have had the freezing issues on Youtube as others on that page have had which I had at first thought may be Flash related.  Uninstalling Flash with their own uninstaller and then reinstalling seemed to fix it temporarily but the problems returned.  I even started avoiding Youtube for a few days in case it happened again, but it seems it's not their problem after all.

Interestingly, the NVidia Tech support guy denied that it could be the drivers, however when so many people report the same thing and revert to previous drivers and have the problem go away, I have to wonder about denial.

Usually I avoid beta software like the plague, especially device drivers, but considering the Skyrim problems I've been having I decided to try them.  Big mistake.

Anyway, now there are new Certified Drivers (295.73) released which I have since installed (cleanly.).  Remains to be seen if it happens again.  At least I can roll back to the last stable release as I keep them on backup.

Just a heads up in case anyone has the same issue and may read this.  My Skyrim issues happened before installing the beta drivers though so now I'm about to try and sort that mess out.