Grey startup screen, HP Pavillion 9000 completely unusable!!!

[Wesley-C]

I have a dual boot using Vista Home premium and Ubuntu Linux [jaunty].  Recently, I had a graphics crash which would seem to have caused a BIOS-level issue; as all I'm getting at startup is a solid gray screen... no grub.  Please let me know what keys I must press to get my display working again, as this computer is ABSOUTELY CRITICAL to my life, and I need it to be functional IMMEDIATLY!!!

[Computer Hope Admin]

Are you at least getting a CMOS screen or a boot screen before grub? If not then it's likely you're encountering a hardware issue, more than likely a video card / motherboard issue based off your description. I'd check your cables first e.g. your display cable. If that checks out does it sound like the computer is booting? e.g. do you get a beep when the computer is booting up. If not my next suggestion would be to go through the POST troubleshooting steps.

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000607.htm

[Broni]

I had a graphics crash

More details?

[Wesley-C]

The computer in question is a laptop... no cables to speak of.  I'm probably going to need either new hardware, or another laptop, aren't I?

As for the graphics crash, all of my input and output devices completely froze, and I had to unplug and remove the battery...  I'm guessing that my worthless nVidia is the culprit... needless to say, I will NEVER buy anything else from them, nor will I reccommend that anyone else use their hardware (I had minor crashes from it in Vista on average every three weeks, need I say any more?)

[Broni]

It may be actually motherboard issue.
What brand/model is it?
How old?

[Wesley-C]

As my subject line somewhat states, it's a Hewlett-Packard Pavillion dv9700 series custom make, with an AMD Turion x2 dual-core processor.