Startup screen flickers to black, then all black screen

I have been struggling with an intermittent problem for many months, and it is getting worse. I am running windows vista on a toshiba satellite laptop.

My screen will go dark (not quite as black as when the computer is off) when I am using it, and although the computer is still working, I cannot see the screen. Then, on startup, I can occasionally see flashes of the startup logo, which is enough to let me know it is loading. My cursor quits working as well.

After I run spybot in safe mode, and run it again at startup, it works for some time. (This last time was 2 days). So I believe I have a nasty virus. I run Norton 360 all the time, spybot rather frequently, and malaware bytes about once a month.

I am able to get it in safe mode by hitting the down arrow once, and hitting enter.

It is very frustrating. I don't think it is the video card, as it is repaired after spybot use.

Any suggestions?

That is weird situation I'd say. I am unsure what actually is the issue here, perhaps one way of finding what may be happening is having a look at your Event Viewer Logs. You can find Event Viewer, in Control Panel, Administrative Tools.

Also please follow these 8-steps, and post your logs at Malware and Virus Removal Forum for analysis. Regards