Windows Vista forum: Startup and driver crashes

Hi, I'm having trouble with Vista, and I hope someone here can help.

My computer is an Everex Stepnote XT5000T that came with Vista pre-installed (In all honesty, I would have preferred XP, but other than these problems and all the unnecessary programs it's fine). Yes, I know I don't need a laptop that big.
http://www.everex.com/products/xt5000t/xt5000t.htm
The only modding I've done is add a 2 GB RAM stick that's compatible with my system, and I installed it in the 0 slot after a mixup with the 1 GB stick in that one. (That caused crashes, which led to...)

However, due to mostly my own stupidity, I've had to wipe the computer four times now, and lost months worth of data. I still have the laptop's 'I ----ed up and I want to start fresh' CD, although that has problems.

Now, here's the actual problem (S):

1. When my computer is shut down or goes into sleep mode, it doesn't turn back on. The power and cd button with the cylinder button are lit, and it's making noises as if it's working, but the display remains black (Yet on). This is on top of the fact that occasionally it WILL start working and the Everex logo will show up, then proceed to tell me that there's an error and I could go to setup or resume. If I select Resume, an underscore blinks in the upper left for a bit before the message 'Missing Operating System' appears.
If I reboot after that, and it decides to work again, then it boots up as normal, admittedly with a prompt to go into safe mode due to it shutting down poorly last time.

2. Now the second problem might be related to the first. Occasionally my display driver will suddenly stop working, and the occasions seem random. Sometimes it will recover, other times I am forced to restart. The driver is called nvdldm (That Firefox spellchecks to 'goldmine?), or something similar- I can't seem to find out what it's actually called.

ANY help you guys can give would be appreciative. Thank you for your time!