oh dear nvidia

I have an XPS15 running windows 7.  It has had an easy life for the last year, as all it has been used for is word.  

I recently tried to connect it to my samsung tv through a HDMI cable.  I thought this would be easy fare for a reasonably new Laptop, but  it is killing it...

I have been getting everything from complete freezes / blue screen errors (saying nvidia card has crashed) to normal error msgs (saying the card has stopped.)

Im not a computer genius, but ive tried downloading drivers from nvidia & dell.  I have also ran diagnostics / maintenance and adjusted setting through laptop / nvidia interfaces.  (and yes i know how to use basics ie function keys and extending to other screens)  It did work once but the video / images on screen were  blinking/ distorted/ pixelated.

If i plug the HDMI in to laptop with it already in tv it freezes-  not just the image moving to other screen,  pointer dead slow / stops- then laptop crashes.  If i plug it in the other way it takes longer to crash but half the time the tv wont find the laptop.

Im a bit concerned as this is the first real work i have asked the card to do and it clearly cant handle it!   Any advice would be great

Nvidia Geforce  GT 540M driver 332.21

windows 7 home premium 64bit service pack 1

XPS 15 L502X 6GB