I hope the data recovery project is going okay for you.
Thank you.. good news to report actually. I found the missing backup that holds 90% of all my family pics and vids! So while I haven't yet recovered my work and artwork, at least I have almost all the good stuff.
Any progress on your end?
Well, we went with the "bad video card driver" theory and tried downloading a new driver, which seemed to work just fine upon restarting....until he tried to play WoW again. Then the same thing happened-- the screen froze, then went to black, then the startup screen was all wonky. That happened a couple of times, and then he left it alone for about an hour-- off, not on. Then he started it up again, and then cautiously started WoW again, and....it seems okay. He played for a couple of hours or so without incident. So we're cautiously optimistic, without really understanding what happened. Meanwhile, I'm going to investigate whether his Nvidia card was actually recalled, and if anything can be done about that.
I'm very glad you found most of your family pictures....be sure to back that up on an external drive now, or possibly two. In fact, especially when you (hopefully) get the rest recovered as well, invest in a good and roomy external hard drive and back up the entire system. I spent this afternoon doing that on a 160 gig drive, and feel so much safer.