M17x Problem with Hybrid mode (2x260m)

Ive been using my M17x mostly as a videoviewer for the past couple weeks, at some point during that time my video card switched over from the 260m SLI to the base 9400 and I didnt notice it.

Today i tried to game on my laptop and the performance was extremely poor, looked around a bit and noticed i didnt have the SLI icon anymore on the botton right. Checked my BIOS and my Hybrid mode was disabled, so I enabled. But now with it enabled my windows boots up and I have no display, only my mouse cursor shows up. I'm forced to hardboot and revert back to Hybrid mode disabled to have my windows show up.

Ive tried reverting back to a Dell display driver with no success, the only thing I cant think of between now and when my 260s worked is the Alienware update with all the new doodads...however it may be completly unrelated.

Any ideas?

EDIT: After some searching aparently booting up the laptop without the power cord plugged in with disable the Hybrid mode, however it still doesnt explain why I have no display after turning Hybrid back on...Is there anything else I need to enable when going back to Hybrid mode?

Using the Fn+F7 and clicking "yes" changes nothing, just keeps booting with the 9400.

Booting into safemode gives me a display and lists the 260m in the device manager.

 

Are you running Win 7? The hybrid on the M17xR1's will only work right with Windows Vista, so if you switched to 7 odds that it will work are slim, and that could be your problem with it. If that's not the problem then you may have a failing GPU system.

 

Yes, im running Win7 - always have.

Update: I booted into safemode, went into graphic devices and simply "enabled" the 260m. Now I cant boot up into windows with Hybrid enabled however the performance is insanly poor. I just ran 3dmark and got a whoping 1698 down from 13k previously.

I seriously doubt this has anything to do with a failing gpu or any hardware at all, since it all started when i booted up the laptop without the power cord in and havent been able to revert back. My whole system is incredibly slow, not just the gpus.

As im typing this there even terrible lag between when i type and when it shows up on the screen....sigh, im at a loss here and im too pissed to keep looking, I'll give it another shot in the morning, hopefully someone will have some ideas.

 

Try disabling hybrid and disabling the integrated chip in the bios. Then boot up as normal, the 260s should be enabled and it should all work fine.

Then if that works restart and boot with only the integrated chip changing it in the bios.

Then if they both work, try hybrid again.

I never really used hybrid because it had issues with the newer drivers and sometimes my overclock would give me bsod with hybrid enabled. But without it was fine...

 

I experienced the 'black screen with mouse pointer only' after installation/update of video drivers while only integrated graphics were enabled. Reinstallation of the drivers with both hybrid + intergrated grpahics in BIOS resolved it.

 

When installing/updating your NV display driver, always verify you have Integrated Graphics AND HybridSLI options set to Enabled in the BIOS.

For the last several months, I have left my R1 with both options enabled. The 9400 is active and the 280s are of course running in SLI. All is fine, no issues - current NV driver.

method to update:

1. Verify both HybridSLI and Integrated Graphics are set to Enabled
2. Uninstall current NV Display driver from the Pgorams & features Control Panel (make sure only DISPLAY DRIVER is checked).
3. Reboot the system and enter Safe Mode (F8 @ the BIOS)
4. Once in Safe Mode, run CCleaner's registry clean. This will remove all left over traces of the NV Display driver.
5. Reboot the system normally. Once back at the desktop, run the NV driver installer.
6. Reboot the system.

 

BatBoy still running vista or you made the switch to W7?

 

Dual boot - 1 HDD is Vista, the other is W7.