Lattitude d830 video problems

Hello everyone,

I bought my Lattitude d830 in july 2007 and have been experiencing performance issues ever since. The specifications are 2.0ghz duo core, 2gb memory and a 256 mb quadro nvs 140m with WUXGA+ display.

I decided put my laptop to the test, and what better way to that than playing a video game? Me and two friends, who happened to have the exact same laptop with the same specs, decided to have ourselves a LAN-party. We played lineage 2, a game that does not require too much of your computer to run smoothly. The game ran just fine on highest settings for the first 5-10 minutes, and then the framerate would drop to about 10. I looked at the others and they ran the game just fine. This was a depressing sight considering that i just bought a new computer, running a low requirement game. It was frustrating because the other two d830`s had no problem whatsoever. I thought to myself that it had to be some sort of driver i had forgot to install. But it wasnt, everything was as it should be, just like on the other two d830`s.

I contacted Dell, and that did not help me much, as i was not able to specify what was actually wrong with the computer at the time other than poor poor POOR game performance. So i simply stopped playing video games, as i wasnt able to whatsoever. I started using my computer my computer for more productive things, and put the performance behind me. But it only got worse. Now the screen turns on black after i shut it down, forcing me to restart my computer with the power button random amount of times before the screen came back on. Sometimes it`d take 5-10 tries, other times 50-100. It also started getting way too hot, pushing 80 degrees celcius.This was when the screen flickering and random veritcal lines or lag spikes of color started.
I opened up my system and saw a huge walll of dust blocking my vent, so i removed it. This helped me somewhat, as the temperature dropped, but the black screen, screen flickering and bad game performance was still there.

Today i am unable to install a driver for my quadro nvs 140m (which i have been able to earlier),  without getting vertical thick lines in different colors, preventing me from seeing or doing anything with my computer. I have tried rebooting my computer many times, using everything from windows 2000 to windows 7, installing all the drivers compatible with quadro nvs 140m from dell.com, nvidia, windows update, laptopvideo2 go, but nothing solves the problem! In order for me to get the screen back to normal, i am forced to start up in safe mode and then removing the driver.

I am suspecting that i am experiencing a gpu failure due to me being one of many lucky people with a faulty nvidia chip. But how can I be sure of this? Are there anyone else out there who has experienced this sort of thing on a lattitude d830, or any other system with a quadro nvs 140m video card?

I am getting sick and tired of this. Any suggestions or answers would be most appreciated.

/Molte