880m not detected

You know something? I HAD prepared myself for the problems that one has to deal with when not building his own system. But it still hurts.

So, last night, I turned on my laptop in order to play a game. I am using a gadget on the desktop that displays the GPU core clock and temp. I noticed it showed all figures as 0. I didn't panic yet. It took not finding a trace of Geforce control panel/experience + no 880m in device manager to start getting things interesting.

Still I told myself it could be a driver issue. So I restarted the laptop and accessed the BIOS. Device not found, where it should say Nvidia GTX... I still had my DOS USB which I had used to flash the vbios of the GPU so I used that and nvflash reported that NO Nvidia GPU was detected on the system...

Some online searches reported many people facing the same problem with their AW/Dell laptops. I won't repeat the explicit terms they used as I don't want to get banned. Let's just say they weren't happy. Some actually replaced the GPU only to face the same problem with their new GPU, meaning it could be a motherboard issue. The problem is not restricted to Nvidia GPU's, it happens with ATI as well.

But wait, this is where things get interesting. I have a slow day at work today so I actually brought my AW to my work place... I switched it on just now (typing this on it) and the BIOS SHOWED THE FRICKIN GPU!!!!
I simply resinstalled (i had uninstalled all Nvidia drivers and software) the Nvidia driver to get the GPU detected in Windows....

Now I would buy a beer to anyone who can enlighten me as to what could have caused this... And more importantly, what fixed it. Is my laptop doomed? Is this going to happen again? Should I just get rid of it asap ?
I mean I live in Dubai, if I have to ship it back to the US to get it fixed (it's still under warranty till June 2015) it's going to cost me at least $200 in shipping.

Some people fixed that problem by reseating the GPU. This is what I was planning to do today, but do I need thermal paste in order to do that? Or can I keep the heatsink in its place during the procedure?

Thanks guys!

Edit: I just came across this topic:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-14-m14x/740058-new-alienware-14-dell-desktop-charge-mode-serious-issue.html
I actually had some doubts regarding this as I noticed last night that my battery was stuck at 75% and not charging. I have now disabled desktop mode to avoid this... Not sure if my system was somehow ignoring the AC adapter and thus solely depending on the integrated graphics... Can someone let me know if this could be the issue?

 

Honestly a reseat of the gpu would be your best bet and yes you would need thermal paste to do this.

 

Actually you don't . If you remove the fan the whole assembly can be removed without separating the GPU and heatsink. It does sound like a poor connection so clean the edge connector with alcohol and use an air can to blow out the slot. Hopefully that is all that was wrong.

Good luck.

 

Thx for the replies guys

I am going on holiday (finally) at the end of the week so I'll do that as soon as I am back. Planning to order some Shin Etsu X-23-7921-5 as I read in other posts here that it's a good thermal paste and will last longer than others such as MX-4.
Hopefully the problem won't appear again... I am back home now and the GPU's still showing...

 

It definitely sounds like a bad seat.

The desktop charge mode doesn't hide your 880M, it only takes you off your AC but your 880M would just slow to a crawl.

 

Have you try FN+F5?

 

True, I have actually thought of doing that but how do you move that hunk without banging into something? XD.

 

Once the fan is out it wiggles out quite easily. Remove two card screws and lift it out of the socket. Then it comes out with ease as a unit. I still have my original 675m complete with HS as removed (for emergency warranty if I manage to mess this one up!).

Cheers,

 

This is definitely the best way to go about it. Let us know how it goes.