Sudden macbook pro screen problem after genius bar "repair"

I took my 15" early 2011 MBP (still under 3 year applecare) to the genius bar after I discovered the battery had swollen up and was pushing the trackpad up. They replaced this and I also asked them to reapply the thermal paste as I felt like it was running hot causing the fans to increase with relatively little load (apparently there was a problem with the early 2001 MBPs and thermal paste which is well documented elsewhere). Machine worked great when they handed it back to me in the store.
But when I turned it on a couple of days later, serious problems! First there was a messed up blue / grey / purple / green screen with lines all over it & it didn't boot. I felt like the DVD-drive noise it usually gives sounded lower pitched than usual too but I could be imagining that.. I turned it on & off several times and each time a similar (but slightly different) screen. I tried various different "startup key" combinations eg safe boot, hardware test without success.
However after I reset the NVRAM I got just a grey screen which then booted into snow leopard. It could've been a coincidence that this happened after the NVRAM reset, I don't know. Anyway, the mac is sort of working - great!
BUT the screen colours are still messed up. Looks like what I'd imagine you'd get if you tried to run in 16 colours. There's also some flickering near the bottom of the screen. Weirdly though, when I click and hold on some items, eg in the dock, the colours seem more normal again on parts of the screen.
Examples below:
1. colours look terrible here!
2. the blue triangle isn't right at all. (note the curvy lines are just an artifact from the camera)
3. however when I click there is is some improvement to some of the colours on bits of the screen eg the dock items (except the logic icon which still looks wrong) - I don't think the big circle in the middle is right (that's not a flash, it's on the screen).
I've tried to run the hardware test by holding down D on start up and aside from taking longer to boot, I don't get any options to run tests.
Anyone have any idea what could be causing this?? As the colours are correct sometimes, I'm inclined to think it's a video card problem rather than a screen problem. System profiler says I have and AMD Radeon HD 6490M & Intel HD 3000. I'm just wondering if they could've somehow damaged the video card when reapplying the thermal paste. But I really don't know.
I will book another genius bar appointment but there's a 1 week wait and it's kind of annoying!
Thanks.

bastienvans
There's no recall for early 2011 machines - only for mid-2010 models.
But you're right - there's a growing thread here of hose having problems with the early 2011 GPU. Odd that it doesn't seem to affect those with late 2011 models.
Clinton

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