Nvidia GeForce GT 555M, games in full-screen cause black screen?

Hi, gamers!
Starting a few weeks ago, any game I try to play in full-screen, excluding League of Legends, has completely black-screened, but I can still hear the audio behind it. It would seem I can still Alt+Tab, open Windows Media Center, and other misc. commands, but all of it is done with my screen completely black. The only way to come out of the black screen is to hard shut-down my computer.
Games can be run in windowed mode, but many of my games run in full-screen by default, so changing the to the windowed setting isn't possible.

I have tried shutting off my Firewall completely, shutting off my anti-virus, updating my drivers, messing with my resolution, uninstalling and reinstalling a few of the games, and messing with my power settings. I've also scanned multiple times for viruses (nothing came up). Nothing has worked.

I'm on an Alienware M14x laptop. My display is the Intel Graphics HD 3000 and default resolution is 1366x786, I have an Intel Core i7 2.2GHz processor, 8GBs RAM, and I run DirectX 11. I'm also using the Nvidia GeForce GT 555M graphics card.

Around the time that this all started, I installed Avast! on my computer and had issues with it, so I almost immediately removed it. None of Avast's old folders are still on my computer. I downloaded it from where I have always downloaded it (I've got a few computers), and it has never given me trouble any other time.

I'm an avid gamer, and I've been restricted to League of Legends and Minecraft. I'm losing it here, guys. I just want my games back ;~;

Hey there,

I am having the exact same problem, I also have the m14x with gt555m and intel 3000 graphics. Only it just started yesterday. I can't play any of my games, bf3, CoD, etc. I can only play games off the internet, not ACTUAL games. It is getting annoying. -.-

Help anyone?

I have an Acer AS8951 with similar specs to you guys.

Didn't have any issues with the GT555M on Windows 7
but when using Win 8 had major issues.

These were fixed by installing the 301.42 driver from the
Nvidia site. No other driver worked properly.

Could be worth a try, if you haven't already....