VGN-AR190G - NVIDIA Infinite Loop Issue

We have an older VGN-AR190G laptop that has been sitting for a couple of years. When I boot it up, everything looks fine until it gets into Windows (XP MCE), then the screen goes blank. If I boot into safe mode, everything looks fine. Once in safe mode, I uninstall the display adapter "NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 GT". I can then boot into Windows normally.

I tried downloading the original driver from Sony Support. I install it, and once the installation is just about complete, the screen goes dark again. I then tried installing the latest version of that driver from Sony, but it hangs on the screen "Searching for device drivers." The system doesn't freeze, but the install will not get past that step.

Finally, I did a system restore, but I hit the same issue once it gets to the point of installing the display driver. I then have to reboot, go into safe mode and disable or uninstall it again. My son purchased this laptop new when he was in the Marines and remembered that it was doing this the last few times he tried to use it.

I checked the Windows Event Viewer and found this error:
The driver nv4_disp for the display device \Device\Video3 got stuck in an infinite loop. This usually indicates a problem with the device itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly. Please check with your hardware device vendor for any driver updates.

After doing some searches on the topic, I found hundreds of posts having to do with Nvidia and this error. Some of the suggestions are to replace the video card, but that's not an option with this laptop.

Has anyone seen this issue with these older Vaio laptops? Better yet, anyone find a solution?