Color display problems

I got a Sony Vaio from a buddy of mine. its about 2-3 years old. running xp home ati moblility driver. when the system starts diplay is all scratchy both on start up and regurlar use. i tried to boot to safemode but i can't see which to click since it is all black with white boxes. i was thinkin driver problems since i connected it to another monitor and the problems were the same. also if you tap it the color is messed up still just in another way, so then i would think main board problems. any ideas?