random screen distortion/freeze during or after windows update

Running Vista Home Basic after a failed reinstall of XP. I restored all the
drivers but had some problems with the Nvidia drivers, particularly network
controller and as such my PC wouldn't detect a wired connection or the
wireless router. I did a shutdown/ restart and found that internet was back
up. So i downloaded everything I could from both microsoft and nvidia
pertaining to Vista stability.

The problem now is that whenever the automatic updater starts, anything on
my screen distorts and my system freezes; I'll restart under safe mode and
everything is fine and then restart normally; the system will be working
normally but then the same problem will happen randomly without automatic
updates even doing anything.

Do I have to go the downloads site and manually d/l and install every single
vista update there is? there were 34 on the auto update list. man this is
really annoying, i miss xp...