I'm having trouble with my Radeon 9600 too. I only started having problems with it when I upgraded the driver to try to fix what turned out to be an audio driver problem with Dragonshard. Since up[censored] the driver, it just keeps crashing during other games that were working fine before.
I've done the manual removal of ATI files after uninstallation that they recommend at the ATI site, and I've used Driver Cleaner Pro (following it's instructions to the letter) and it makes no difference to the problem. Every driver on my machine is up to date, including the motherboard BIOS.
The oldest catalyst driver I've been able to find is 5.8. Anyone know of any sites that have older versions?