Unusual display problem, driver related?

Hi, yesterday I was loading up a game of starcraft when the game crashed and my screen went weird. i should have taken a picture but I didn't have a digital camera on me. Anyway, to describe it, everything was larger than usual and the colors were distorted and pastel like. i thought maybe it was a virus or something else but I ran avast antvirus both at the desktop and also a boot scan but they turned up nothing. I then booted the laptop in safe mode and everything looked normal again, aside from the normal black and white layout. I uninstalled starcraft (because my friend sent me a map, and i thought maybe a virus hitched a ride on it) and rivatuner but no matter how many times i rebooted, same problem

so today, i reinstalled my drivers (from laptopvideo2go.com) but i still had the same problem. i shut down the laptop, went out, then came back and booted the laptop again expecting the same results. at first it was still the same while loading and then the screen flickered and now its back to normal (aside from my toolbar, which the icons still has the weird pastel color). i went to my drivers tab, reloaded back to my previous driver (whatever that was) and now i am able to use windows aero and dreamscene.

should I download some driver cleaner software (can't find a good one) and then install my video driver again? suggestions welcomed! thanks

 

Do you see the distorted/messed up image when you connect the laptop to and external monitor? If yes then its probably a problem with the GPU or drivers.

Here is a link to driversweeper-use it to perform a "clean" install of the drivers.

Also make sure that you monitor your temps since it could be the GPU overheating or the laptop is clogged with dust(see the cooling guide and the guide on how to monitor temps)

 

thanks for the reply

when connected to an external monitor, the laptop screen flickers and returns to "normal" (meaning still some pastel coloring on toolbar, background turns to blue color). the external monitor shows the same thing. but when unplugged from laptop, the laptop goes back to what I now know was 800x600 resolution, and the unusual pastel like color.

I was given the driver sweeper program suggestion on lv2go.com so I followed the steps to remove the old drivers. occassionally the problem will come back during start up but right now as I type, everything looks normal although im too afraid to shut down or restart my computer!

i currently have an RMA process going on with my laptop retailer for a broken key on my keyboard, should I also notify them that I may be having hardware problems with the video card?