Do I need to replace something in my laptop?

[toptennut]

Hey, I installed Gentoo 1.2 onto my laptop way back when, and am looking forward to putting it back on. My laptop has developed an unusual problem though, which I THINK lies in the hardware. Under Windows, when I start Adobe Photoshop, the screen will simply go totally blank while PS is loading. If I'm playing music at the same time, the music will also instantly stop. However, the CPU fan stays on. If it try various keystrokes combos to test if the system is still running, I never create any hard disk activity.

I thought that this was a Windows problem, except that I experience the exact same phenomenon under Linux (I currently have Mandrake 9.2 installed) when using Evolution, or choosing OpenGL screensavers, or other random times. The fact that this occurs both under Windows and Linux leads me to believe that its a hardware problem.

I'm looking forward to turning this into a Gentoo-only box (I've dual booted in the past), but am trying to figure out if there's some hardware part I should upgrade first if I want the system to become reasonably usable again. At first I thought it just might be the graphics card, but the fact that sound output also stop has made me reconsider. Any suggestions on where the problem might lie, whether in software (unlikely, it seems) or a specific hardware component, or at least ideas for how I can figure this out myself? Does it sound like something that could be fixed just by installing gentoo the right way?