Problem with Kessex Peak

Hi everyone. First post, but something I'm really interested in figuring out.

A few minutes after I enter the Kessex Peak "zone" my screen will freeze, as will sound and then go blank (black). After a few seconds the sound comes back then the screen comes back on. After a few more seconds it freezes up again the same way, then about the third or fourth time doing this I can hear the game, battle and all, but my screen is black with just the pointer. When I scroll over things the color around the pointer changes but that's about it. I opened up task manager and Guild Wars is taking 100% of my system resources. I can't end the task, minimize or anything. I have to reset my box to get out of the game. This is the only zone that does this (so far) from pre/post Ascalon to Sanctum Cay. I have actually ran back through the portal to The Black Curtain after a couple of freezes and it seems to be normal again. Is there a problem with this zone? Has anybody else experienced the same thing I have? Trust me when I say it's frustrating to have a 4K exp point mission you can't do, but you can look at the wizard's tower from Fishermen's Haven.

Computer Specs:

AMD Duron 900 Mhz
640MB RAM
ATI Radeon 8500 128MB RAM
Windows 2000 SP4

Guild Wars Options:

Graphics set as low as possible
800x600 full screen

Internet Connection:

Cable modem.
SMC broadband router.

Nope, I did Villiany of Galrath with 3 of my characters so far all with henchies, and did not have any trouble at Kessex. Perhaps some files got corrupted during installation, so reinstalling might help.

That's a possibility. I'll do a scan of the drive to see if it has any bad sectors that may be causing the issue. I've opened up a ticket with Guild Wars support so I don't want to change anything yet just in case they want me to try something specific. Thanks for the feedback.

Edit:

Thought I would update this in case somebody else was having the same problem. Tech support suggested I update my VIA chipset drivers. Doing so caused my Direct3D to break and I could not run the game at all. I updated the drivers to my graphics card and still no Direct3D. I uninstalled the newest VIA drivers and installed the next latest release and so on until my Direct3D was working again. After that I went back to Kessix Peak and it worked fine. I'm not sure what fixed the problem, either the VIA drivers or the updated graphics drivers. I still find it odd that it only happened with this one "zone", but I'm back up and working and have 4K more experience points to show for all the trouble.