Black Screen with Colored Lines (Ack!!!)

Let me start by saying damn HPs 1 year warranty that expired 4 months ago (esp since this is the second hardware problem I've had in the past 4 months)

Ok, I'll try to explain what happened and the symptoms of the problem to the best of my ability. Any thoughts, advice, and/or insight is highly valued and I thank you all in advance.

Earlier today I was playing FarCry, about 5 min into the game I got a few red patches on the screen and the game froze. ( This had happened a couple days before, and I had thought nothing of it; I just assumed the FarCry .dat file was corrupted and that i may need to reinstall the game. ) I did ctrl+alt+delete to restart my laptop and the task manager came up but the screen just kept flickering and I could not do anything. So I unplugged it, took out the battery, waited a minute or so and started it back up. Within a few seconds I saw a black screen with several narrow colored lines on it. The screen appeared to have a fog or mist on it that slowly faded away (left bottom to top right corner). Once the fog cleared away the screen went blank within a few seconds. It stays that way, black and dead for as long as I leave it on. I have tried rebooting it 6-8 times since then, with the same results. The screen is black with 2-7 colored lines, and always has a fog that dissapears in about 35 seconds each time. It then goes black, the Bios screen never shows, the XP startup screen never shows, nothing ever shows, not even a flicker. If I leave it on for roughly 6 minutes or more I can hear the Windows startup sound. (it normally should be heard much much much faster than that) All the normal lights are lit up on the laptop, the wireless, bluetooth, Quickplay, Media buttons, power button, etc.... all work. I can hear the hd spinning quietly, I can hear the fan come on, the dvd rom seems to work as well. I just have nothing whatsoever on my screen.
I do not have a XP cd, but I do have a HD Clone cd, that interrupts the normal boot procedure to run the program on it. The interesting thing is that when I tried putting that in, the black screen with colored lines stayed there and did not fade away.... even after almost 10 min. (not sure if that means anything or not).

I think I have stated all the symptoms as best I can. I initially suspected the LCD, the motherboard, or the graphics card. The last was my strongest initial suspicion and it still is after reading what I could find so far online.
I will hopefully have time tomorrow night or over the weekend to take it apart and make sure there are no loose cables/connectors going to the LCD. I had it apart 2-3 weeks ago to replace the fan/heatsink (the other thing that went bad on me after the warranty was up), and it's possible that I did not get something tight enough, but I would think it would have shown up sooner if that were the case.

Here are the specs on the laptop, as best as I can recall from memory.

HP Pavillion Entertainment Edition DV9000
Intel ???? Chipset/Mobo
Intel Core Duo T2250 @ 1.7 Ghz
2 GB DDR2 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GO 256mb Vram
17" BrightView LCD screen 1400x900 max resolution
DVDRW LiteScribe technology
1.3 mp built in Webcam
Bluetooth
Media Center Remote Control
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center 2005 SP2
(I think that's all that could be of any use, sorry I can't remember the exact motherboard it has)

Thanks again for any help.

*I kinda am expecting that I may have to replace the video card, and hence the mobo as well. I really hope I can avoid replacing any hardware, since I am currently living in Romania, and I already had to wait 6 weeks to get the fan/heatsink unit that went bad. I do not want to have to wait another 6 weeks to get more hardware sent to me from the US. :/ *

Sounds like a fried video card.

sorry to say this, but your laptop is toast. while it is THEORETICALLY capable of replacing it's graphic card, most manufacturers solder the card onto the motherboard to avoid damage. the time/effort/money it takes to replace this thing is pretty much the same as buying a new laptop.

With laptops, "replacing the motherboard" == "replacing the laptop"

Sorry to be the bearers of sad tidings :/

Try and find a good local computer shop... without testing the comp myself its hard to say, but it could be something as simple as a bad display connector. Or it could be as bad as a fried GPU.

Actually, that's very good advice. Always try everything possible before assuming the worst.

I must be in a "glass is half empty" mood.

Thanks for the replies guys. You have confirmed my fears. :/ I should have extra time tomorrow to take it apart and double check for loose connectors etc. Maybe one of the Zif connectors wiggled it's way loose, but I doubt it. In any case, I can't hurt anything more than it is already.

The video card IS soldered onto the motherboard - I made note of that when I had it apart a couple weeks back. I'm not used to taking laptops apart, right down to the bare chassis, so that kinda surprised me enough to remember it. I'm just hoping that I did not unwittingly do something to harm it whilst I had it apart. I was as careful as I could be with static electricity without being in a lab. Of course, running it for nearly 2 months with a faulty cooling fan surely didn't help it any (note - it ran, just was very noisy).

Since I live in the smelly backwater of Eastern Europe at this time, I can't guarantee that I will find a computer shop that: A) knows more than I do, which is just enough to be dangerous B) is honest.
Also, prices on computer parts here, if you actually find them that is, are very high. 1.5 -2x the cost that they are in the USA. I can use my colleagues pc for communication etc.... but I really need my own back for word processing, photo editing, etc.... let alone gaming purposes.

Did this problem start after the heatsink/fan fix? It may be that the heatsink is not mounted correctly, or the TIM is not applied correctly. Most TIM takes 20 hours to fully cure.

The problem started over 2 weeks after I replaced the heatsink/fan unit. I don't know how many hours my laptop was actually running during that time, but I'm sure it was at least 70-75 hours of problem free operation. If there was a problem related to the thermal paste, wouldn't it have shown up sooner?

Also if you have a VGA/Dvi etc cable try connecting your comp to an external screen. If you don't get the "Black Screen with Colored Lines" effect then it means your GPU is fine, which would be good.

I'd try what Wesman suggests. Most laptops have a connector for an external display. If an external display works, then either the laptops display has gone bad, or the backlight for the display has died.
If the external display doesn't work, then most likely the graphics chip in the laptop has died.

Btw, there is no "graphics card" in the laptop. The GPU would be just a chip soldered directly to the motherboard. (More bad news.)

It's possible that the heatsink and fan is supposed to cool the GPU too. It's also possible that, when it was replaced, it wasn't properly installed so that, over time, the CPU or GPU overheated and died.

It's also possible that you just need to blow the dust out of it.

I took the entire laptop apart yesterday and checked all connectors, cables etc. Everything was fine, or appeared to be. The only thing that I did not take apart was the display itself... The Geforce 7600 IS soldered directly to the mobo, which sux, I know. When I replaced the fan & heatsink I only replaced the fan itself and the part that screws down onto the processor. The part of the heatsink that covers the video card/GPU I never touched it during the replacement process. Also, the laptop was running cooler after replacing the fan etc.... it was noticeably cooler to the touch even. The only thing I can figure is either static electricity from when I had it apart 3 weeks ago (and it seems that would have killed it right away) - or - it wore out over time, esp. with it running hotter than it should have for nearly 2 months.

Wesman - I have an S-video cable that I can try hooking up to my colleagues laptop.... it's the only option I have over here, but I'll def. try that.

***^^^ I guess I should have known that hooking 2 S-Video OUT ports together wasn't going to do much. :/***

If you have a public library, they may have some comps you can use to test out the screen... but yea s-vid to s-vid will not get you much

I finally got to check out my laptop with a friends monitor. Sadly, the problem remains. Even with his fully functional monitor the same screen displays. Actually, his monitor had a somewhat different pattern of stripes on a black screen (as if that mattered). IN any case, at least I know now that it is the video card/mobo for sure. :/ Now to figure out how many pennies I need to save to get a new pc.

Thanks for the help guys.