Asus c90s turns on but no boot and screen doesnt turn on

hey guys
i think my Asus c90s just died. any insight what could be wrong would be awesome
i suspect it could be the gfx card (in which case im hoping some of you may have spare gfx cards lying around)

here is a link to the thread i wrote up about it

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1641301

thanks!

Hey guys
i think my C90s just carked it. It was working fine on sunday. didnt use it at all on yesterday

just came home today and turned it on. the screen remains blank. the HDD indicator flashes a few times. the fan starts spinning....but thats it.

I think the screen isnt even turned on (its like completely black, not lcd showing black colour black). and there are no bios sounds or windows booting sounds at all

after hardreset. taking out battery, powercycling by holding the power button without battery for 10 seconds etc. and then trying again, same thing happens

and i tried it with a monitor plugged in via hdmi adapter to dvi (c90s doesnt have dvi, and i only have dvi monitors)

strange part is, if i put in a windows 7 dvd, ( i have bios set to boot from cd as priority) the hdd flasshes if i hit any key early on during boot, as if loading from disk. and because i have been doing hard resets. i suspect its taking me to the safeboot menu. cause after idling for a while, and i hit enter, the hdd indicator flashes rapidly again as if booting. but my webcam light never turns on, because i installed asus smartlogon manager, which should turn on webcam at the login screen to use my face to logon

i even tried the fingerprint swipe, but nothing happens (not that i can tell without sounds or a working screen)
wifi indicator never turns on (my entire system is auto mated, so these are signs that things arent working)

then i tried blindly logging in by typing in the password manually blindly, but to no avail. i logged onto another computer with msn messenger, so if i booted successfully, it shud tell me im logged into 2 computers at once. but it doesnt

which leaves me to 2 conclusions (based on my limited knowledge)

the screen + soundcard is dead. the mobo is dead
or the gfx card is dead, which explains why even external monitor doesnt even work (but doesnt explain why there are no sounds)

ive onluy started using an external monitor with my c90 this month. and not sure whether its the hot weather, but ive noticed the gfx card is 10degrees hotter than usual using everest
but it was working fine on sunday, and i havent used it since, so i dont see why it wud suddenly die while turned off?

and would it be a hard drive failure? but would the computer even turn on and stuff if it was the hdd? sigh

any suggestions would be great guys.

i dont really wanna buy a replacement 8600gtm for this old lappie. i was hoping to get more use out of it before i upgraded at the end of the year

ive hardly used it (didnt touch it for a whole year last year) so its practically mint condition