Hmmm... not a total surprise, the quality of Nvida's recent drivers has been very poor IMHO.I suspect 44.03 are probably optimised for use with DirectX9.
It may be that installing DirectX9 will help with 44.03, but I would not recommend doing this. It's almost impossible to uninstall DX9 if you choose to revert to 8.1. (setting a system restore point in WinXP the only way I know of).
Installing DirectX9 may also create other problems so I'd only try it as a last resort.
I'd go back and try the 30.82 drivers, if they don't work for you then 28.32 may be your best option.