Laptop Screen Gone Haywire At Start Up - HELP!

Sometimes when I'm turning on my laptop, the screen comes up wonky--the pixels are odd colours and there are lines running across the screen. I'll turn the laptop off and then back on and it will happen again and again, with different patterns on the screen. If I let it set there, the screen fades somewhat to black, but it doesn't go to my start up screen.

My brother, who has a laptop identical to mine, said that it's happened to his laptop once, but this has been happening with me for a month or two now. It wasn't too bad until recently (well, today, really) when it took me about five or ten minutes this morning to get the computer to start up. It doesn't normally happen a lot, and I used to think that it was because I didn't shut the lid on my laptop after I shut it down--but should that even matter?

I have a HP G60 laptop with Vista Home Premium 32-bit with roughly a 17 inch screen.

I don't know if it's a virus or a Vista problem or if I should go to Best Buy and let the Geek Squad take a look at it, but I thought I'd try here first.

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum!

Thanks,
Kristeen

Try a system file check.
Windows key and R, type cmd, Right click,Run as administrator,
Type sfc /scannow press enter
Then Windows key and R, Type msconfig press enter
Go to Services, Hide all Microsoft Services.
Stop all other services.
Restart and go back to msconfig,Services, and restart each other service one at a time with a restart between each to find the cause of the problem.

ilikefree said:

Try a system file check.
Windows key and R, type cmd, Right click,Run as administrator,
Type sfc /scannow press enter
Then Windows key and R, Type msconfig press enter
Go to Services, Hide all Microsoft Services.
Stop all other services.
Restart and go back to msconfig,Services, and restart each other service one at a time with a restart between each to find the cause of the problem.

Click to expand...

Did what you said, but this came up:



What does that mean/what should I do?

Most of the time after I get my laptop to start up properly, it always wants to do system restore--if that helps at all.

EDIT: Didn't see your edit, trying that now.

I restarted it after I disabled services and it worked fine--but I don't know if it was just having a good moment or if the problem was fixed. By 'stop all services' did you mean disable or something else?