My XPS M1330 gives spontaneous black screen

This is the third time my 1330 has given me a black screen. It keeps happening when I play games. I heard other people are having the same problem saying it has something to do with the motherboard being crappy and NOT the videocard going bad. I'm thinking about returning this laptop and skip all the elaborate time wasting exchange for a refurbished replacement and having Dell techs beat the crap out of the laptop when replacing the motherboard. What do you guys think I should do?

 

tell me what version of the nvidia drivers you're using, quick!

if you don't know, right click your desktop and go to NVIDIA Control Panel, then select Help -> System Information.

It should say ForceWare version: XXX.XX and i'm guessing you have 174.31?

 

This happens to me too since I switch to Vista a month ago. I don't quite remember what I did, either tried disabling the screen saver (put to 9999 minutes), or change the power settings to longer time of inactivity before screen goes off. I think it's the former. Since I did that, I've never had that anymore. It could be something else, but so far it works for me.

 

I'm using forceware 156.69. This only happened when I was gaming.

 

I get the same thing in games. It's only after it's been about an hour or so of world of warcraft or WC3... I'm 99% sure it's the gpu which is attached to the motherboard. I'm probably going to have it replaced since I am now also having the vertical lines issue as well.