I have been having a problem with my Gateway T-1616 laptop. I have Vista as my OS. My COMP crashes and the screen gets all messed up looking. I have a picture I took from one time it happened.

here is the pic.


It happened while on the Gateway screen screen before the vista startup that time but it doesn't only occur on startup. It will happen anytime including in safe mode. I have no clue what is causing this problem and would appreciate if anyone could help me find out what is causing the problem and how to fix it.Any hardware changes lately?
What video card?The only change is I upgraded my ram from 1GB to 2gb but I was already having the problem before that.
It has a ATI Radeon X1270  video cardTry hooking up an external monitor on it and see if it does the same thing.
If it does re-install the MBoard and video drivers from the Driver CD that shipped with the laptop.
Has this machine been dropped recently ? ?

If the video chip is going bad it can only be fixed at the shop...sorry.actually it now has took a turn for the worse and WONT even turn on so i am sending it BACK to gateway to hopefully get it fixed. I had already SENT it there for the same problem but they never fixed it. all they did was reformat the hard drive.Best of Luck to you...