Resolution failure and Crash

Hello All,

I recently had an unexpected problem with my notebook, which is a little older than a year (HP DV9780, 2,2Ghz RAM, Nvidia 8700 video card).

I was playing a computer game when the screen started to flicker and the game started to freeze and resume every other 15 seconds or so. After 2 or 3 times of this, the screen went black and the computer shutdown by itself.

When I restarted, everthing on the desktop was at a very low resolution & color (everything looked huge).

From there on here is what I did:

1) Tried to adjust the screen resolution via the Control Panel: this did not help.
I restarted again, even during start-up, the windows vista logo looked out of proportion, with a weird color.

2) Diagnostics was run automatically: I received the notice that this was an error that could not be automatically fixed. (At this point there is no apparent resolution problem, but there were a few evenly spaced dark blue lines, which stood out in the background)

3) I tried to restore my system to the previous week. The resolution problem was not solved, but my anti-virus (Norton 360) went-out. At his point I decided to give it a rest for a few hours.

4) At this step my notebook will not start, I always have to re-boot it, then diagnostics is run.
I tried to restore several more times (using system restore DVDs, which were not considered valid). Finally, I restored to factory settings.

However, my notebook still refuses to start.
Does anyone know why my resolution would go suddenly awry, the system crash, and then refuse to start.

I would appreciate any help/opinion.
Regards,

How far does it get in the boot process when you try to start it? Does it get into Windows? What's the last screen that you see?

When I boot my computer:
I can see the "boot screen" with diagnostic options F1 for this, F9 for that...
Then I think I see the Windows Vista logo and the small green loading bar.

And then the screen turns black, and the computer will not respond (caps lock is blocked). So basically I can't get to my desktop.

I can only access the "main screen" via diagnostic mode.

insert ur vista recovery disk and click repair after selecting a couple of options it will give u some options of types of repairs to do, click diagnostic memory blalbbla run that and see if it picks up any problems if not then go back and click the startup one! If it has any problems let it fix itself. If that works good luck to you but if not insert ur main os vista disk and click repair after doing a couple of options this should fix it! If not your graphics card is messed up!

Actually, somehow the computer has managed to start-up again...I am writing from it. Although everything is currently set at factory settings.

I am consulting the HP web-page for "black screen errors."

If the graphics card was "messed-up" would the system have any chance of starting normally?

By the way, since the system is "up&running", I am downloading driver updates.
At one point I received the error messade "driver display nvkll.... has failed and fully recovered" could this have anything to do with current situation?

While I was going through the HP forums I found an interesting article about nvidia 8400 and 8600 video cards, actually I have an nvidia 8600 GS
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1028703/nvidia-g84-g86-bad

Furthermore, the DV9700 series seem to be a ticking time bomb, with video cards failing within a year or a year and a half...below you can find the complaints of numerous HP owners:
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/board/message?board.id=Display&thread.id=7646