I think my graphics card died (but I am still using my laptop)

First: I have an HP Pavilion dv9000 CTO laptop.

17" monitor
Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 @ 2.50 GHZ
4GB RAM
2x 500gb Hard Drives (new, replaced old 120 GB that crapped out on me)
Nvidia Geforce 8600M GS for my graphics card (or at least, it was)
Windows 7 64 bit (originally Vista 32-bit)

3 years old come this February I think.

Basically, I think my graphics card has been off since I upgraded to Windows 7, as my laptop is not supported with graphics drivers for Windows 7.

Anyways, I was playing Guild Wars in the wee hours of yesterday morning, and GW was freezing up, as it had been recently. I probably should have recognized it as a sign. Finally, it froze up for good (whereas before it had recovered after a few seconds). I powered down, and upon reboot, Windows would not start. Doing a fix, I discovered that I could boot to my desktop screen, but the resolution was at 800x600. I thought that it was probably a problem with the driver for my graphics card, so I spent a bunch of time trying to get the right driver.

Long story short, whenever I try to update my graphics card with the drivers for it, my screen dies.

My laptop still functions now, but instead of my Graphics Driver saying "Geforce 8600M GS", it now says "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter".

I have discovered that I can even adjust the resolution higher using this "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter", so thankfully I am not stuck at 800x600.

Basically, my question is this: Did my Nvidia graphics card die? Has a backup or integrated graphics thingy taken over to run my laptop's graphics needs?

Everything else seems to be fine, it is just the graphics card which is weird. I read online that laptop graphics cards cannot, practically-speaking, be replaced, and that most of the time, when a graphics card goes, so does the laptop. However, I am happy to see that my laptop still seems to function alright. I am in the process of downloading Guild Wars and I am going to try it out again.

Thank you.

Edit:
Interesting. This message popped up when Guild Wars client finished downloading.

3D Initialization Error

Guild Wars was unable to initialize 3D output for your system.

Please verify that you have installed DirectX 8 and an updated video driver, and that your system meets the following minimum specifications:

Windows® XP/2000/ME/98
Intel Pentium® III 800 Mhz or equivalent
256 MB RAM
CD-ROM Drive
2 GB Available HDD Space
ATI Radeon 8500 or GeForce 3 or 4 MX Series Video Card with 32MB of VRAM
16-bit Sound Card
Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse

Have you tried the Vista 64bit drivers? As you say, Windows 7 isn't supported on that laptop - good old HP customer service strikes again

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp42501-43000/sp42635.exe

The drivers page for your laptop (which I'm sure you're aware of...) is here: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/s...t=1842189#N486

Yes I did, and they would not install. I even downloaded the Vista 64bit driver and browsed my computer for the file, and it would not find it.

But right now, my computer does not even recognize that I have a Geforce graphics card in it.

I just found out about "Whitebox" laptops, and I am thinking about cannibalizing this laptop and building my own. I also need to build myself a new desktop pc.

Still sucks, because this was a very nice laptop.

8600m gs is supported by windows 7 I can assure you; try to contact hp as snograt suggested

sounds like a driver problem --- if your video card was dead you would not get any display output at all, or it would be messed up colors, snow, pixelated, etc... Did you try the NVIDIA forceware drivers?

Sounds to me that some part of your graphics chip is damaged. Since the basic "VGA graphics" works, I'd guess that some section of the 3D functions is boinked. The basic "VGA graphics" only uses a sub-set of the full capabilities of the card.
It may be possible to replace the graphics chip in the laptop, if it's on it's own daughter card and HP can provide one. But it would be very, very expensive to get a repair shop to do the work.