Drivers wont pickup my 260M's

Hi, hoping someone out there has a solution for my M17x prob.

So I have a t9600 core duo/ GTX260m SLI rig as my primary gaming platform. Never had any issues with it. Yesterday, a notice popped up in my windows 7 updater that suggested I update to the new chipset driver. Always the cautious one, I went ahead and made a system image backup with my external HD then proceeded install the new chipset driver.

Once the driver was installed and the comp rebooted most everything worked fine. Tested out my GPU's w/ COD/BO and no issues. However the WiFi was disabled and I couldn't get it working again. I tried everything i could come up with (including reinstalling the Broadcom drivers) , but I was still getting no signal bar. After messing with the settings for an hour I was like "screw it" ill recover my system image.

So I let it recover from the backup over-night. Today, when I tended to it this morning I saw that the WiFi was back up and running fine. Only now a bigger problem was staring me in the face. Nothing on my laptop is recognizing my 260m GPUs. Only my integrated Nvidia card is showing up in the Nvidia control panel. I installed and un-installed several Nvidia graphics drivers with absolutely no success. My windows exp index dropped my gaming graphics rating to 4.6 further showing that nothing seems to be picking up the cards.

So thats where I stand now. I hoping that since im not incredibly comp savvy that its something simple. Currently I'm using the chipset and graphics drivers from my AW resource disc. Anyone have any thoughts/advice/suggestions and most importantly solutions?

Thanks much, sorry for the long post. I wanted to be as detailed as possible.

 

Try disabling the integrated in BIOS, boot and see what happens.
If you succeed remove any trace of video drivers and reinstall them
Also install your drivers from Dell's support website.

 

Try forcing the drivers in the device manager. But i would also use driver sweeper & ccleaner to remive the driver & the associated software, make sure u are using a mobile driver and not the "desktop" version.

As a future reference, i wouldnt use windows to update your hardware, i hqve noticed that sometimes it will try to install "new drivers" but they are in fact older versions. For your machine just use the dell site.

 

I had the same problem when I first got my M17X, turned out to be simple...I didn't know these computers had Stealth Mode Go into BIOS and enable Hybrid SLI, otherwise you will only run on integrated chip.

 

hi, same problem a week ago.
Fix: reinstall nv chipset drivers from dell site then reinstall you your other drivers and all will be fine. if you go into win update after all this it will again offer the update. either ignore or if you decide to update you then will have to uninstall and reinstall your grafikcard driver. this will 100% work.

 

After playing around with an endless cycle of uninstalling, sweeping, and reinstalling new drivers; my 260m's are finally being recognized again. Gonna have to agree with Clever here, not gonna install anymore chipset/gpu drivers from windows update in the future. Thanks for the help.

 

Tchamber was on the money too, noticed it was not running on hybrid SLI graphics while in BIOS yesterday. I enabled it and did some more driver work today. Works like a charm now.