Attempt to reset the display driver and recover from timeout failed

[I Bruise Easily]

Hello,
i have the nVIDIA geforce 8800 GTX on my PC and it used to work properly until one day i was playing TF2 and the game crashed and there was the message saying: Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered. my OS is windows vista 32.
the problem reoccured more frequently until it started to lockup windows and the BSoD started to appear and the PC restarts.
the problem advenced to a permanent multicolor vertical lines and dots on the display and windows never starts and again the BSoD appears with the message: attempt to reset the display driver and recover from timeout failed.
i tried constantly to reinstall windows and each time i fail as the installation never completes when the windows try to start for the first time it either locksup or the BSoD appears, and on either way the PC reboots and keeps locking-up or BSoD appearing and so on ..

is the GPU doomed, burnt-out, unrepairable?
or still there's something i can do before dumping this one and buying another one ?

please help.

 

[I Bruise Easily]

thanks for reply.

well, an hour ago i managed to install windows 7 successfully and i don't see the colored lines and that stuff, but it happend twice that the display goes black for a sec and goes back normal with the message that: display driver kernel system stopped working and recovered ... i think it was something like that !

so is it more likely that the GPU is malfunctioning ?

btw answering your question .. yes i had the latest drivers installed for vista 32bit, nVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX