Laptop not detecting the 2 GTX280M Graphics Cards

Hi, for some time now my laptop has not been detecting the 2 GTX cards whenever I boot up my system. It only loads the Geforce 9400 card. I tried switching stealth mode off and on and that does nothing, and the other solution I tried was going into the BIOS and enabling the cards through the Hybrid settings, but all that yeilded was a black screen with a cursor on startup.

my current drivers are: nVidia_Geforce-GTX-280M_A03_R279499

Please Help?

Thanks.

P.S. Yes, both cards are "physically" there in the system

 

have you tried to just have one card plugged in at a time? what happens?

 

What do you mean? These are INSIDE the computer and I dont really want to be taking this apart. If I was unclear before, I mean that I watched my cards be put into my system when I went to have my laptop fixed.

 

Who fixed it? Is it possible that they did not use a ground strap or left the power cord pluged in? Or the battery in the system when they removed/inserted the cards? If so it's possible that an electrostatic shock killed the cards. Thats why Slick suggested trying to remove one card and test both individually. This would help narrow down if the card is the problem or not, and which card may be dead. Or possibly both.

Have you tried uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling them? Ar eyou under warranty?

 

I sent it to Dell to get it fixed. And when I got it back, everything was fine until I accidentally started it up one day without the power cord plugged in. Thats when I noticed that they would not get detected. Tried switching stealth mode on and off, and nothing.

I am under warrenty. And can I uninstall them simply by going into the control panel and selecting "uninstall programs"?

 

one thing...can you see the cards in your device manager?

You should see the cards listed under display adapters

For example:

 

No I cannot. The only card there is the Geforce 9400M.

 

When you start the laptop without power cord, BIOS disables both 280M cards to give best performance out of battery. Its disabled under BIOS.
As soon as you turn on, go to BIOS and under Hybrid, turn it on. It should solve your issue for sure.

 

I did that, and when it gets to the login screen, I get a black screen with a cursor on it.

 

Ok so it should be a bad driver or something. Does it work if you are in safe mode? I used to get similar issues when running a driver with modded inf. Download 296.10 from Nvidia website and use it with the inf I posted. Also don't forget to disable the 3rd option in GPU settings in BIOS.
See if that works.

NVIDIA DRIVERS 296.10 WHQL

 

This, here..

 

to test to see if the cards are working... disable hybrid and integrated graphics in bios and let it boot... if you get a black screen, give it a few minutes... up to 10 minutes for windows to install the drivers... that may be why the black screen is there..... disabling integrated and hybrid in bios will force windows to only use the 280's... after it boots, reinstall your graphics drivers and then on the reboot you can re-enable hybrid and integrated

 

^ This worked like a charm, thanks alot.

@ spradhan01, I tried installing the other display driver that you posted, but it disagreed with the system requirements so I couldnt install it.

 

Nvidia verde disagrees with all R1 systems. That's why I posted the modded inf. Try with that.