Screen permanently black after several "ATI display driver..." Errors?

I got the "ATI display driver has stopped responding and has recovered from an error" several times over the last couple of days where my screen would freeze for a couple of second and then start working again and would display that message. I thought little of it as it did always seem to work afterwards.

Last night however it got extremely frequent happening at least once a minute and i decided to try and restart my computer to see if that would help at all. Now when I try to turn the computer on the screen stays black and will not do anything. I can hear that the computer trying to work as the fans are going and the power light is on, it's just the screen that isn't working.

How to troubleshoot

"Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" error in Windows 7 or Windows Vista

I found these guides on how to fix the error message but at the moment both are no good as I can't even use my computer to fix the problem as the screen won't work.

I am pretty sure the reason my computer is doing this is because of outdated drivers as I recently did a fresh install of windows and only installed the drivers that came on the CD I was given with my computer. I should have downloaded the latest drivers online.

I am running Windows 7 on a Dell Studio 1558 laptop. I am unsure of the graphics card at the moment as I can't access the computer but I know that it is an ATI of some sort.

Thanks in advance!

Does your display power up? can you see something on the display like BIOS post?

I couldn't see the BIOS before, the screen wasn't doing anything at all, but I did managed to boot windows in safe mode using another monitor and was able to reinstall my video card drivers and did a system restore to an earlier point when it was working.

I managed to get it working normally for around 20 minutes on the normal monitor before it crashed and blue screened. After another system restore i have it working but i feel that it could crash again at any minute.

another forum suggested that it could be a heating problem with the heat sinks and possibly blocked air vents?

Cheers!

yes, this issue could be caused by overheating. Can you post a screenshot of the blue screen?