Hp pavillion, will not start up

Ok, first off for no reason at all my screen split in two horizontally and then windows would not start up.
After many attempts I was finally able to do a system restore via pressing F11 and took the settings back a week, this went on all night and didnt finish, but when starting up again the problem was restored.
I tried playing some fairly low spec games but after 5 minutes i would get black squares, and the screen would go all pixalated (if this is the correct word for it) the laptop would freeze and I would get a pop up bubble telling me sonething about the video card driver went tits up but it's managed to recover it. I did wonder if the graphics card was fff......... not as it should be :-)
Now the screen is spilt again, yet when i press F11 I can only do computer check up (which is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard, and now only system recovery, which if i went through with might not fix the problem and i could quite possible loose everything. please bear in mind that the laptop is the only one with the photos of my wife and I's trip to Singapore (I know! should have backed em up if they were that important :-/)
Please help, i,m hoping to get it to start up and maybe fixing the nvidia driver, save my stuff and then maybe look at a new graphics card if thats the problem.
Theres some beer in this :-)

P.S. i can get into Command prompt if this helps

Mine has done the exact same thing this past week. I was able to get into the recovery by pressing F11 at startup and re-formating the hard drive to its factory condition, however it did not fix the problem and still will not start. But I do know that by doing that I have lost everything on my hard drive. The screen split not a physical crack in the screen but rather two identical screens displaying one above the other.

Have you had any luck fixing yours?

I have the same problem with my pavillion desktop.

For the person with the photos he needs to save: When you get the blue boot screen at the beginning of the boot, hit F8 several times. You will then see text with boot options. Select the option to boot in Safe Mode (without networking or other options). My computer booted in safe mode and I was able to copy photos and other important files to DVDs (only with a file copy the Roxio backup suggested by HP doesn't work because not all the drivers are loaded in safe mode) and to run some utilities to try and fix the problem (to no avail).

Once my files were safe I tried lots of things to fix the boot but finally resorted to system recovery using discs I had made when I first setup the system. Unfortunately the recovery requires a reboot to complete. When this happens I see text saying "please wait while windows prepares to start for the first time." The system then appears to boot to the point where the vista blue/green/yellow background appears with the message "please wait" and the revolving circle symbol (like the hour glass in older systems) runs for a while. Then the background looks funky and the circle stops moving (the system appears to hang). Finally the screen flashes some error text with a blue background (looks like it comes from the bootstrap program) so quickly I can't read it and the system tries to reboot itself (again!).

Now none of the boot options work (including safe mode and boot repair) because it says the recovery didn't complete.

If anyone has more ideas or different results please let us know!

finished graphics card. you need to send it for repair. its a hardware problem that I don't believe you can fix it yourselves