loaded a game and my screen went blank, restarted and got virtudwwm.sys/116 bluescreen, booted in safemode and removed lucid virtu and my video drivers

after that i could login normally, but when i reinstalled the drivers they weren't recognizing my gpu.

backed up my important shit and did a fresh install of win7 and tried installing just my video drivers, and now it bluescreens on a normal boot with atikmdag.sys

i'm thinking that my gpu is dead. is that the case?

NO, it's still your drivers.

Follow the AMD directions here: http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=69168959&f=188

i've already used ddu to remove any trace of my drivers and done a fresh installation of them

Then you need to set Windows Updates to manual and do it again.

I've redormatted and completely reinstalled updated chipset, network, .net and video adapters. I've even tried manually expanding and replacing the drivers associated with the blue screen and still it doesn't work. I'm thinking its a hardware issue

Reinstalled the drivers again and manually expanded the faulty driver again. Windows loads this time but goes to a black screen. I can't think of what else it would be.

E: wew blue screen again

This post was edited by Nereaux on Feb 20 2015 07:22am

Try to hook up with a friend and bring his pc over and test the gpu in his pc and his gpu in yours etc

Re-seat the RAM and make doubly sure it's in the proper slots. Then like chinger said, try another vid card in your PC.