Problem with my M17x's graphics card

No doubt this has been asked and sorry if it already has, but no other thread I've checked has been able to help me so here it is. Warning: it's a bit long because I'm hoping more details might help with solving this problem.

TLDR: If you don't want background on my problem, go ahead and skip to near the bottom

I got my m17x around Christmas in 2011 off of the official website and it performed fine for most of the duration. Occasionally some overheat issues but I just shut it down and resumed later.

Then last week, bam, I put my bag down for a bit and someone tripped and dropped their own bag on it. So I started up and noticed my resolution was all messed up, down to 800x600 I believe and I couldn't change it to anything else

I tried resetting it and it immediately crashed. I tried calling Dell support, but as I expected, after 3 hours of going through different people, I just got hung up on...yeah...

After a series of reboots and system restores, I finally got that issue fixed and tested on some games. Every game I played before such as XCOM, Starcraft 2, League of Legends, etc I could always run on the highest settings, no problem. Now, bam, load up and instant crash. After a bit, every 5 minutes my computer would just shut down even if I was just on microsoft word or google chrome

A friend of mine suggested a guy he knew who was great for electronic repair since Dell support shut me down so I figured, sure I'll go see.

I dropped my laptop off at the guy and he told me that he couldn't spot any hardware damage but there was a nasty virus on my laptop and he helped me sort it out. That definitely solved the crashing issue and I haven't had a crash since, but when I loaded up my games, I found horrible frame rate issues even when my settings were turned to low.

I went to device manager and found no problems except one thing: My Nvidia 680M was missing from Display adapters and all I found was a Mobile Intel R Graphics card. Not good, I hit Fn+F7, nothing even showed up, even switchable graphics didn't help.

And now that the background is taken care of, I ask what do I do now? I've tried a couple system restores and deleted drivers and reinstalled, but nothing. In fact, when re-installing Nvidia drivers, I get the message that there is no hardware compatable.

I'd say the only thing I haven't tried that I've checked on other threads for is manually open my laptop and check the card myself. Right now I don't have the means to do so and I also would need to look up a way to do so as well, but aside from that and possibly replacing the card, what should I do?

 

On second thought, I think I'll move this topic to the "graphics cards" section instead. Sorry about that.

 

Probably of if you Re-Pasting the CPU & GPU, the problems get fixed. My opinion.

 

It might be as simple as the NV card being dislodged somehow. Ii is easy to open up and remove the fan followed by the heatsink and card as a single unit. Clean the edge connector, put it back together and try again.

Plenty of tear down vids around as well if you have a search for them

 

Just for anyone interested the thread got moved to here

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/715320-my-nvidia-680m-gone-device-manager.html

 

10cha

 

Try reseatting the card and repasting.