PC freezes with Kernel Mode Driver Version Stopped

Have a PC, HP SmartTouch 600-1055. It would boot nicely and in a few minutes, sometimes longer, it would freeze especially when you are online doing video streaming like in youtube or hulu. Task manger does not come out, hence I would do a force shut down. In some cases, an error meassage would pop out from the lower right corner of my screen saying "NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver Version 198.19 stopped responding and has successfully recovered". By this time, PC already has locked up and would do a force shut down.
With a friend's advice, I did a factory setting restore. I would have thought this would have been resolve with such action, but yet I still have the same issue on hand.
Can anyone please help me with this problem. Thanks!

First I would see if you have the latest video drivers and if not; update to that.

If you are at the latest then I would contact HP. New hardware is not infallible. Personally if this is new equipment and is acting this way I would be sure to return it while it is still under warranty.

ok..looking for the latest driver for GT230M. About the hardware, I ran pc doctor on it, cause I thought it could be a defective video card before I did the restore, and it passed on all the test. by this is it still possible to have a defective hardware?

did a clean install now and downloaded all the latest drivers from HP. and yet the error persists.

Unfortunately freezing problems can have numerous causes which makes a simple solution generally impossible.

HERE is a huge thread on the issue with various ideas such as making sure your BIOS is up to date and memory settings are correct, trying a new anti-virus software, running memory tests to verify your RAM is OK, trying a new motherboard, etc.

But as I said, since this sounds liker new equipment, the easiest thing would be to take it back and try another unit, even the same make/model, while you still can as it could easily be a parts defect.