Graphics issue again?

Hi all,

I have an early 2008 Macbook Pro running Lion. I had the graphics chip issue and replaced the logic board last year. Been running fine since.

Til a few days ago...

At first it was intermittent. While running the mac, all of a sudden the graphics would become garbled and the computer would freeze.

The first time this happened I had XP running on Parallels in the background. A notice came up saying that XP updates were just installed and needed to reboot the computer to finish. I was in a hurry on something else and hit "reboot later". This may all be a coincidence but this is when the problem started.

A reboot would sometimes correct the problem. Sometimes not. I thought maybe a heat issue? But cold or hot, it didn't seem to matter.

Then it started working again. ???

I immediately hooked it up to back up all of my files on Time Machine. It had been a while. This is shortly before the hurricane came ashore in New Jersey 400 miles south of us. We lost power two hours later... during my Time Machine backup!

Yesterday, it quit working again.

When I press the power button, I hear the chime... then the screen comes up garbled. I listen and can hear the hard drive apparently trying to load the operating system. It seems unaffected, but after some minutes of waiting, I try pressing the volume control buttons while listening for the "water drop" sounds and I hear nothing. (Could it be on a pop-up screen I can't see... preventing the volume control from functioning... I don't know).

I've reseated the ram and tried different ram. No change.

The battery is holding a full charge. I've run with and without the power cable.

So that's where I am.

The problem is consistent...

Power button, chime, garbled screen with lines and boxes, active hard drive. No volume control up/down sounds.

Am I looking at ANOTHER video chip problem???

Help please!

Thank you!

Ross