Really need some help on my video card issue.. assist please.

Laptop: Alien MX17xR3
OS: Win 7 Home Prem, SP1

The original video card ran hot, causing problems and eventually burned out. After doing some research on some sites (notebookreview.com and LaptopVideo2Go.com) I saw many had success with the never  GTX680M installed with a modified driver.

Everything worked fine for many months, but then one day the card stopped working, as if it lost the driver. I've been working on this on and off for over a year now, with help from those other forums.

What happens is that even with the updated (mod) driver, it boots to a black screen. I can only use the system now if I install the basc vga driver - so of course I lose a lot of functionality.

A) Does anyone know how I might fix this?

B) I'd rather not spend for another video card, but is there a newer (cooler) card than what came with this than the original that I can put in this thing that will work? I DO NOT want to go back to the OEM card because it was terrible - system should never have been sold with such cards.

Of course, I'm no longer under any warranty. 

Please help.