[Kalina240]

(So I’d like to apologize in advance if this isn’t quite the correct area, I’ll start off sounding off topic just to give background info)
So all the trouble with my laptop started a few months ago when there was an IE scare. I’ve always used IE and must admit I stick with it just because it’s in my comfort zone. During this time my boyfriend convinced me to download Firefox and use it instead, at least till the problems were solved. Immediately after downloading my computer had massive issues.

It would randomly become unresponsive. I wouldn’t call it freezing because the mouse still moved, but nothing the mouse hovered over was highlighted, and all hotkeys stopped working. This occurred about 60 seconds after loading up my user account, or the admin. (I’m on vista.) Through tampering I found out that if I disabled my sidebar and HP advisor I could keep the system relatively normal. I deleted Firefox hoping maybe it just didn’t agree with vista, but still have to disable sidebar and HP advisor upon uploading.

About a month passes and during this time the computer has a dramatic decrease in performance. Loading pages began taking twice or even three times as long, followed by IE shutting down at random without warning or explanation. (leading me to believe I had a virus so I ran every scan I could, resulting in nothing) with more tinkering (I’m aware my tinkering is likely the cause of the problems) I found that Adobe was causing the problems and uninstalled all traces of it. Shortly after this Norton Antivirus began randomly saying it was out of date, even though I have almost a full year left on it. It refuses to update itself and customer service was more interested in keeping me on the phone for an hour than helping.
I let this go thinking I would be fine for a little while. Here is where it gets relevant to this forum, when I turned my computer on three days ago, everything was fuzzy and has distorted colors. The colors are consistent, everything that is supposed to be white is teal, and everything red has the same black pixel blotches on it. I changed my graphics settings hoping to affect it but it still has the same look. My father believes I over heated the Video card and the fix will simply be to get a new one.

I’ll admit I know little past what is required to operate a computer, so I have three questions I’d be grateful if you answered.
1) How can I tell if my video card really is just damaged?
2) If it is not the card, what are some other possible causes that could be the culprit, and where can I go to cure them?
3) And last, what would you recommend to be a not terrible graphics card I could buy? (otherwise I’m going to judge by looking at all prices and picking a middle one)
Additional details: I loaded up a few games to see how they ran once we thought it was my vid card, and besides giving me a headache with trippy colors and random red pixels, they ran without lag or other problem.

Thank you Kindly for your time,
Kalina