I am fairly certain that this has something to do with my video card/driver, but i have never had this happen before.
I have searched the forums and other places on the web and have only come up with the advise to seek a professional. I am hoping there is something i have missed. lol. But i thought i would try this last effort before shelling a couple hundred bucks.

My wife and I are gamers, specifically MMORPG's. I KNOW these are graffics heavy games and require a decent video card. I also know that laptop's tend to get hot and that will slow things down or cause damage.

While playing our game, the screen started to do funny things, jumbling up the image, lines of odd colors and flickering. It passed and i finished up the game. When my wife tried to restart the puter, it would not start up immediately and wanted to do a start up repair that ultimately did nothing.
After playing around a bit, i was able to get to boot up normally and thru some troubleshooting found that our video card driver had somehow become corrupted.
The MS Update showed a new driver update and we FIRST tried that driver. However the problem got worse. I ran a system restore and was able, after several tries, to get back into window. I researched the video card and found that NVIDIA (we have a NVIDIA Geforce 8600 for laptop video card) had an even more recent update to the video card. I uninstalled the previous driver and installed the new driver as advised by NVIDIA.
The driver went thru its install shield and everything seemed to be installing well. I got up to do a quick errand as the install took its time and when i came back, the screen was black and the puter was quiet. I thought maybe it was restarting to finish the install and left it awhile LONGER. Nothing happened.
Finally i restarted the puter using the power button. It began its boot up going thru the first couple of screens. But when the log-on screen should come up, the screen suddenly goes black and then the screen about an improper start up comes up offering to do start up repair or continue with a normal start up. I have tried the repair option several times and sometimes it offers a restore (i have tried to restore to every restore point offered) and have tried running a few diagnostics from the advances options offered. The restores do nothing different and all the diagnostic options come back normal or operational.
When i choose then normal start up, it goes thru the first couple screens (offering the options to enter bios etc, then to a screen showing only a bar that shows start up progress), then goes black, with a cursor in the upper left corner then beeps (all normal) then goes black again and the back light turns off and the puter goes quiet. the next screen should be the log-in and it never comes up. All the backlit buttons remain on, the power shows on, and the fan is on, but nothing is happening. If i leave it long enough, it will go thru a restart and it just endlessly goes thru a restart process until i hit the power and shut it off.
So, any ideas? lol or am i gonna be shucking out some bucks.

The puter is a laptop, HP Pavilion DV9000, Intel core DUO, vista 32 bit, video card already listed.
Plz let me know if you need any other info, ill see what i can get.
Any help is much appreciated.
Thank you.Does it boot up in safe mode?Hp laptops are quite tricky. I've had that similar issue with that same model range.
It can be fixed by rolling back the GRAPHIC card drivers
or if its still in warranty you can call hp up to see if they can replace that for you

if not.. it might be time to shell out a few bucks on a new model.. Help! I am having the same issues on my lap top. I dont know what it could be. Not a gamer at all. Did you ever get it fixed?