Is my graphic card dead?

Hello,

operating system: windows xp

I was playing empire total war and suddenly the game crashed, whereafter my screen froze in desktop. I restarted my pc and at desktop it froze again, and then a blue screen popped up saying something was wrong, but i had gotten that blue screen a lot of times before where i had just restarted the pc holding the power button and it would work. This time however, when i restart it normally, it doesn't enter the desktop. Instead, after the windows splash screen where the screen that says Welcome to windows is suppose to show, the screen is black and sometimes a mouse appears that i can move around. Then the monitor turns on and off for a little while and finally goes to power saving mode. I can start my pc in safe mode, and i went to download new graphic driver by letting nvidia do automatic search for missing drivers. its funny that the search could recognize my graphic driver, which indicates that its not entirely dead or what? When i downloaded the driver and installed it it still didn't work. I went to do the automatic search in nvidia again and it found the same driver telling that it was needed. apparantly the driver i installed didn't really settle or what?

I tried to recreate the system to prior dates and to start it up to the previously working settings but none of it worked. I took out rams, but wouldn't work. My graphic card is still present in device manager.
Another thing, my brother thought he saw a message about infinite loop in the blue screen, but that wouldn't be the problem since it starts up in safe mode or what?

Please help!
Thanks!!!