Major imac Video issue
I have a late 2009 iMac 27in and a couple hours ago the display glitched out with blue and red squares all over the screen and the computer completely froze. When I did a forced restart the computer booted up with five 1/2" thick sections of vertical blue bars, then at the point where it should leave the gray screen with the apple logo the screen remains gray and the blue bars are replaced with a pattern of tiny blue squares all accross the screen and seems frozen.
The computer does start in safe mode, however, but the 5 vertical bars remain on the screen. What is odd is when I drop the resolution those 5 bars become 4 and change their physical location on the screen. I've done a disk utility check and it said everything was ok...I don't know what to do.
a couple months ago an issue came up where the screen would shut off if the computer got too hot...maybe its just the video card connection is loose? is there a way I can fix that?
I'm very scared right now, this is my only computer and I have NO money. I need to find some kind of DIY solution.
iMac (27-inch Late 2009), Mac OS X (10.7.4)