Well this sounds similar to something that happened to me with my laptop.  I can't remember all the details but basically I was playing a game a then it froze.  I restarted and it couldn't load windows properly, all the graphics were screwy in various ways (lines, blocks, blank spots, etc...).  I took my laptop in to a computer shop after trying assorted things and was informed the graphics card was shot and that playing lots of high-graphics games on a laptop was a big no-no.

Laptops just aren't designed to run high-end games for long periods of time and eventually the graphics card will burn out, even in a high end laptop with above recommended requirements for the games your playing like I had.

I sincerely hope for your sake that isn't your problem because if it is that's the end of your laptop since the graphics card is on-board.

You might want to call HP, get a techie on phone and describe the problem to him. Chances are he already encountered that and knows what is broken/how to fix it. Nothing to lose asking.

It's 100% safe to say that Elemental had nothing to do with this.  Three years of gaming is actually really good for a laptop.  They tend to burn out long before that if you're using them for advanced gaming, unless it is a laptop designed specifically for that purpose.  These tend to be much larger and have much more sophisticated/optimized cooling systems, because the major issue with laptop life span is heat.  Sounds like you pushed yours pretty hard for a number of years--its no surprise that the graphics card blew out.  Unfortunately, with a laptop using an onboard card, the only way to fix it would be to replace the entire motherboard, which is sometimes more expensive and always harder to do than simply purchasing a new one.

Yeah, I'm not upset or anything about the comp dying. I knew when I bought it that it would probably die after a time due to heavy graphics use. I mainly got that computer when I started school and wanted something portable. As it turned out, it was not good at being either. The battery life on that comp was horrible (half hour at most fully charged and minimum power settings). I sort of rushed to get that laptop to replace my old desktop which had died a few months prior. My next gaming computer will certainly be a desktop. At this point I'm going to scrimp and save for parts for a new comp. I still have HDDs, PSU, and optical drives so I can get away with a new mainboard/processor/ram/graphics card. But decent ones are still spendy, so I'm going to be gameless for a while (I guess not entirely due to 360 and Wii, but still).

Any suggestions for components for a new rig would be beneficial. Keep in mind very tight budget (sub $300-500), but only the components mentioned above needed. My PSU is 550W and have both EIDE and SATA drives. Thanks

Wow, I've never purchased a laptop for gaming since I like to build my own computers, but I was looking into it. This kinda makes me not want to buy one, that is, if the gfx card fries easily. Sounds like those graphics cards are running way hotter than the manufacturer's recommendations. You would think that with the advent of cooler running CPUs that this would not be an issue. (example: my p4 used to idle at 60C on air, my i7 idles at 34C on air)

As for a comparably priced PC, you could look at AMD's line of pre-builds, and buy a used video card like a 8800 GTX. I never had issues with that card, but I heard of people having issues with nvidia's 260. I don't know much about ATI's lineup though, and I know they are a lot less expensive than nvidia, with the exception of the 5970.

As for space, I would suggest a 1TB 7200rpm HDD. They are around $100 range.You could always go for 250GB 7200rpm drives if you plan on wapping them out later, but want to cut corners on the initial price.

RAM I would suggest a non-gaming grade RAM, no fancy heat sink or fan, if DDR3 you will want 3GB Like: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148147

It has low CAS and 1.5V it also has good feedback from buyers.

If you want you could go through a company website, see what they offer, do some research on the components and see if you can build the same system for less, in almost all cases you will. Computer building is way easier nowadays than in the past. motherboards are labeled, and you no longer have to worry about jumper settings since most issues are fixed via the BIOS, etc.

Good luck and happy shopping!

I built a friend for a computer, and here are the parts we got (2 months ago, off of Newegg. $640.92 including tax and shipping at the time and for a whole rig. It's pretty decent but it's not gonna set records either (: and the videocard could easily be replaced with something better in a year or whatever). 

ASUS M4A77T/USB3 AM3 ATX Motherboard ($80)

Western Digital Cavial Black 1 TB 7200 RPM SATA Drive ($90)

AMD Athelon II X4 635 Propus 2.9 GHz 95W Quad-Core CPU ($100)

G. Skill 4 GB (2x 2 GB) DDR-1333 RAM ($95)

XFX Radeon HD 5670 Video card ($110)

Antec Three Hundred Illusion Black Steel ATX Mid Tower case ($55)

LITE-ON CD/DVD Burner ($20)

Corsair 650W Power Supply ($90)

If you ditch the hard drives, the DVD drive and the power supply, and get a few things on sale on Black Friday, I'd say that would run ~$350-400.

4 GB is good enough and the mobo has four slots so you can upgrade later on when you have the money (if you need to. Right now 4 GB is enough, in a few years it might not be).

The CPU is somewhat weak (lacks an L3 cache). But it's cheap for a quad core and I imagine it is even cheaper now. The mobo does support AMD's latest hexacore CPUs so in a few years you could drop in a bargain-bin AM3 hexacore CPU and call it a day. (AMD is dropping support for AM3 next year once they release their 'bulldozer' line. But any CPUs released for the next few months will still be on AM3).

Videocard isn't amazing but helluva lot better than what your labtop had, probably. (: Again, in a year or two you could throw in the Radeon HD 5850s which run most games right now on High to Very High, and by then it would probably be $100 or something like that.

One of our desktops has a Geforce 9800 GTX in it.  Runs everything out today on ultra max settings (although my monitor only does 1280x1024).  It's a real bargain these days as well.

Huh, never thought about using Amazon. Thanks for the tip!

Nuff said as HP sucks as much as Dell. You had issues because HP uses the cheapest sorriest crapotola parts of all the systems out there except Dell which uses the same crappy crap.

It seems I hear more about ATI graphics cards not playing nice with games than nVidia.

I use a laptop I got through Micro Express. The only things that might be better with my laptop are that they have some sound issues (such as sometimes when I pause a video it will get hung on the last sound and keep playing it) and does not do well with really, really loud sounds. However, the good builds from them maybe more than you want to pay (looking at the pricing of the new models, a basic gaming setup with no extras is about $1700).