8800M GTS

Hello, I have a Gateway P-171XL FX laptop. I duel boot Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit & Win Vista Home Premium 32 bit, though I almost never use Vista it is the operating system this computer was designed for and supplied with. I am also using raid 0. My problem started when I was playing Civilizations V game, the display went blank (there was back-light). I could not do any but unplug the laptop and after a few minutes wait restart it. Restarting I can see and go into bios if I want then the choice of operating systems come up. For Win 7 boot I see the spinning balls of color then a blank display. I can't see the screen where I log in the password. The same is true for booting into Vista. I see the green progress bar then a blank display before I get to log in in the password. Safe mode the computer boots up okay on both 7 & Vista. Have tried uninstalling the display drivers and tried different versions of Nvidia drivers. The only way I can do a normal start up is to not have any Nvidia driver installed and let windows install the standard VGA driver (Win 7 and Vista) otherwise with an Nvidia driver installed my login/password screen is blank with only back-light. Oh, I have also reinstalled the Win 7 OS and display driver. I got the same results. The display only works in safe mode or without an Nvidia driver installed. Just to say again I have used the original display driver from gateway and several subsequent drivers offered on Nvidia's web page. It seems to me that the LCD screen is not at fault since it works in safe mode ect. It seems not to be virus/trojan or operating sys as I have reformatted and reinstalled OS.
What do you guys think has the video card failed? If it has failed what are suggestions? Scrap laptop, new card, upgrade card possible? Or other suggestions...

I can not play games or use aero and other things without the display driver.

Thanks for your kind help.