Help! Nvidia Optimus just broke? M17x R4

Hi guys, I have an Alienware M17x R4 I bought back in 2012 with GTX 680M and something really weird happened just 10 minutes ago. I was surfing the web and all of a sudden I got a blue screen of death, restarted and then the system was only recognizing the Intel Integrated card, the Nvidia card was not even present, it did not start and when I checked in device manager, it was missing. I was afraid that maybe my GPU may have died?

Note: I don't have Alienrespawn because they charge you 60 dollars to use it (Premium).

So then I decided to Fn + F7 to switch GPU cards, to see if optimus was the issue. My laptop started fine this time with Nvidia!!! I was very happy to see that my Nvidia card was not "dead."

Does this mean my OPTIMUS is corrupted? Right now I can not use Optimus -> Nvidia card with Intel (Switchable in Windows) I had to manaully Fn F7 to disable Intel and to use the Nvidia.

What do you guys think I should do? Should I ring a bell to support or is there any way I can get this issue fixed? Can a system restore to factory state fix it? Or a Reformat perhaps? I really don't want to keep switching manually like this because that defeats the purpose of having Optimus! Anyone out there that can help me with this issue please!

Could this be a problem because of the Nvidia 3D Vision drivers I had installed? I uninstalled them just now and it seems the integrated card is running? I can't tell whether if the intel card is running or not but in Nvidia control panel, it shows it is running. This is weird.

 

Hi there. That is a weird problem. You might want to start with making sure it's not a driver issue and install the last one dell authorised for the R4.

I'd also reseat the video card. Simple enough task and you get to clean it out behind the heatsink. Maybe (hopefully) it's just a poor connection going bad?

You'll need to have the dell driver on it to get support anyway so a good place to start.

 

Could you tell us what the blue screen error code was? This could help us diagnose what it was that crashed. Resplendence Software - WhoCrashed, automatic crash dump analyzer try this.

 

If it works on only nvidia drivers, then it points to the intel drivers not working properly. Use the windows update recommended drivers, avoid others, they don't like optimus very much.

 

The OP never indicated a driver update. We could be seeing a faulty GPU.

 

It crashed while I was on Intel integrated. It happened while I was surfing the web. Certain times, when I would click i.e desktop icons or try to open "my computer" or "my documents" or "start button", it would be extremely slow, very slow, would take a minute to open. Now that is not happening anymore. The Nvidia card seems fine because I was able to play games so far and nothing shows that is faulty. However when my computer crashed while I was on the net, I did get a blue screen and it caused the computer to restart, then after the resolution was all messed up, so I booted again and then it fixed it. However the Nvidia GPU was missing in device manager, it seemed like it did not start or was not recognized after the boot up. So I used FN + F7 to manually change the GPU to see if the issue was related to Optimus and now the Nvidia card started up as normal it seems and I can play games now without any issues however I do not know whether I am running on Intel or Nvidia, I can't tell which one is running at the moment. After the Fn F7, I checked Device Manager and now I can see both GPU's, Intel and Nvidia. Before the FnF7 I was able to only see one listed, which was the Intel. Do you guys think I should Fn + F7 again to see what will happen?

I did a Nvidia driver update last week and it was the latest drivers I installed using Nvidia Geforce Experience Program. It did install 3D vision, however I uninstalled that now seeing that it was not the driver for this laptop. I have been playing a lot of games since yesterday and so far I can't say that it was Nvidia that caused it because the crash happened when I was using Intel. I use Windows Update all the time and keep my system up to date so I am not sure what is happening here.

I used whocrashed but after scrolling down it says that no valid crash reports were found.

 

If it crashes again, take a note of the error msg/codes or capture the screen with your camera/phone and pst it here and it will help perhaps to isolate the issue.

As for knowing whether integrated or discrete gpu is in operation especially during games then if your games are in any way demanding and you say you have no issues, then I'm guessing it would be nvidia.

I'm not sure about the mobo and component layout of the r4 but with my r3, the left side rear vent / fan was connected to the integrated and the right side to the discrete. If the fan was blowing air out of one or another, it was a simple way for me to tell if the discrete or CPU/integrated was under load. Not a sophisticated method but it worked for my r3.

 

I think these two articles may come in handy if the issue happens again:

Optimus Units: Correct Video Card Driver Instal and Uninstall Procedure

My Alienware Crashes to a Blue Screen Error