Dead video card, virus, worm, trojan, HDD?

[pookfinster]

I am relatively inexperienced in computer problems, and this seems major. The problems started over three months ago. Unfortunately, I did not log every error message and action on my part until January. I guess the problem started with a frozen screen, cursor, keboard, et al. Ctrl-alt-del did nothing! The only remedy was to hit the reset button or power off.
I tried system restore.
I received a NAV auto protect error box: "Unable to initialize the firus scanning engine database files." and "unable to find valid virus definition files. Please reinstall Norton Anti-Virus." When I tried that I got "You have an insupported version of NAV." apparently system restore caused computer dates and the NAV dates to be out of sync. After I got the NAV up and running again After a freeze and the reboot-scandisk-desktop sequence I received a display error message Red Circle, white "!" The driver file that displays items correctly on your screen isn't working. To fix this you might need to install a new display driver. See windows update drivers or check the website of your display driver manufacturer for information about updading driver files. I clicked help. It did nothing. Screen freeze again. reset and it opened in safe mode.
I tried the maintenance wizard. After restart, in safe mode, I saw the driver file message again.
In Safe mode I got the following error: An AOL companion error has occurred. Please restart your machine. If this persists you may deed to reinstall the AOL software. YOU may also go to AOL Keyword companion help for more information. (an error occurred establishing the AOL companion main reading engine system needs to support at least 256 colors). I gave up and turned it off.
The next day when I powered up, everything was OK until it froze again while printing. Ctrl-alt-del resulted in "Spool 32 (not responding). I restarted, got the desktop, and could not get back online.
Dell told me to uninlstall and reinstall NAV. Following Support.dell.com information, in process of uninstall I got a message that I had a manyually cinfigured email protedtion. I got text instructions to unconfigure email client on desktop. At this point, I have no idea what is going on.
Called AOL, they were no help and said not to worry about it. I left the computer on, ate dinner, and came back to a frozen screen.
Dell told me to back up my data. They had me reinstall Windows ME. They had me reformat the C: drive, reinstall ME, and other software.
Later in the month reinstalled the video driver< I was having problems with the driver notice and the system colors kept coming up as 16 ant the display size was wrong. They ran a debug script.
At start up I noticed that the Dell logo and the Windows ME logo display were "degraded", i.e., there were some vertical lines that were not displayed properly, wrong colors.
The screen froze again with a degraded image. The reset button needed to be hit two times before anything progressed. The black screen with the white words that should have said "Microsoft Windows Millenium Startup Menu" red as "MICR^SOFD GINDOWS MILLENIEM STABTUP0WENE" It opened in safe mode, with the wrong colors and size of display. I shut down, restarted, it went through scandis, and when the desktop opened everything looked good. It ran ok for about an hour and a half., then froze.
Similar normal/freeze/restart sequences over the next few days, sometimes the desktop would come back in the wrong size/color settings, sometimes with red vertical stripes on a grey background for the desktop.
The system limped along another month.
Dell ran the debug script.
I reloaded the windows again. with only ME loaded, I could only play simple games like solitare. Sometimes the display was fine, other times moving the cards would leave an off color ghost trail. The system still freezes. Dell tells me the 3 yearservice policy has expired. I have been trying to get them to cure this problem for 5 or six months. I am at my wits end.
Any thoughts, please?
Thanks in advance.

[Strider]

Hi Pookfinster,
Does your Dell have onboard video or an add-in card?
Whichever it is, can you lay your hands on another video card and test your system with it? If you have onboard video, you'll have to disable it (probably) to get an add-in card to work.
I kinda got lost in your tale of woe, but Nvidia based graphics systems sometimes do not perform well if you try to upgrade the video drivers without completely removing the old drivers. Seems to me ATI may behave the same. After your Windoze reinstalls, did you upgrade your video drivers more than once? There are free programs out there that remove all traces of old drivers--detonator destroyer for Nvidia, for example.
HTH,