Computer crashing, possibly graphics card problem? help plz

[Rocky]

ok, I've never had a problem with my laptop in the 1.5ish years I've had it all the way up until last week, when one random day I was playing games on it and it decided to display black with white stripes all over the screen. There was no way to get out of it besides manually turning off my computer. Since then, this has been happening to me over and over.

After talking amongst other people about the problem, from what I understand is it is most likely something being caused by my graphics card which is crashing the computer. Something along the lines of a BIOS not working? The thing is, I've checked for updates and I am currently running the newest version I think.

I'm using the AMD 880G with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200. If anyone knows anything or has any questions, pleaseeeee post and help me out, thanks.

[Merlin]

If it only happens during games the video card might be overheating. Is there enough air circulation around it? If it crashes even when not playing games the video card is probably going out. Hardware failures in laptops are always a pain in the ass.

[Rocky]

I think it may be overheating yes, because it only does crash while I am ingame. Is there something more I can do to keep enough airflow around the video card? I keep my laptop on a desk upright, and I've been using videogame cases to keep the laptop elevated off of the desk lol, but it hasnt really been working out.

I've also uninstalled the catalyst manager for the video card and reinstalled the newest version, but it just crashed again after I did that. Is there anything else that anyone can think of that I should try before I do something with a high risk of bricking my laptop, like trying a new BIOS?

[Rowan]

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[ultima_trev]

Is your GPU passively cooled? If not, maybe your GPU fan motor died?

Maybe the newer drivers or Windows patches are having incompatibility issues with your hardware? Have you tried a reinstall of O/S?