nVidia Card not detected

Damnit. >=(

No sign of any problems at all. Have been monitoring heat when playing games too, and no sign of the card going above 64c at any time. No unstable behavior, nothing unexpected...

Then a little while ago I was working on my neice's tablet, with some stuff stored on the storage drive on this machine and got a BSOD indicating the nVidia driver. Rebooted to VGA enormous crap, rebooted and Intel driver has taken over.

The machine doesn't detect any video card at all. Not that one should be there either. nVidia drivers load fine.

Am going to try and reseat it, will come back and report. But was hoping someone could give be suggestions for things to check. I always miss things when it's my own gear - I can't think straight when in panic mode over my own stuff.

Any suggestions highly appreciated!

 

It might have just died, I had a card do basically the same thing. I was playing a game just fine, laptop shutdown suddenly, Nvidia card was gone and never came back.

If the card isn't showing up in the bios and reseating does nothing then it is probably dead.

 

Thanks for the reply, Yoda.

Well, looking at it, reseating looks like a bigger job than I want to deal with at this late hour and having had a few beers. Am not certain, but looking at it, would I have to remove the heat sink to try and re-seat? Or will just taking off the fan and unscrewing the card be OK and I should just be able to take it off the mobo and then plug it back on, re-screw & re-seat the fan?

Meanwhile, card came back on this reboot. It's the 3rd since bsod.

Thanks for the BIOS reminder, I had checked that on the reboot after I noticed the nVidia card was missing, and BIOS did show the card, but it was not detected when the computer loaded and not showing as missing in device manager.

Damn, this card better not be failing so early, but it seems as if it might be the beginnings of that. Am going to get a look at the dumpfile now. Might not be worth trying to re-seat after all. Perhaps just a call to open a ticket for anew card with Dell... Maybe I can get a better card, perhaps an AMD.

More suggestions or insights are still welcome as this continues... Thanks guys!

Edit:
I know, I always go for a hardware issue before I think about software. But this really looked on the outside like hardware. Am still not convinced it's not...

The dumpfiles show kernel driver errors, not necessarily related to hardware, and according to Whocrashed, not related to hardware at all. No indications of failed hardware at all. The indicated files that caused the BSOD were ntkrnlmp.exe and ntoskrnl.dll. Most likely due to a driver error.

The 3D driver on the nVidia throws errors every now and then, I wonder if this could have caused it? Or could the card suddenly have just failed, causing the driver error which set off the kernel errors? Anyone have a good way for me to test that? Perhaps a test on the video card is called for and see what happens?

Gut feeling is I'm probably going to have to just watch and wait and see if it happens again... blarg...

 

There might be some truth to your faulty driver arguement. The BIOS should detect the discrete card, drivers or no drivers. Your does, therefore the motherboard is registering the Nvidia card. One thing I wonder is if the switchable graphics changed over from the Nvidia card to the Intel graphics whilest you were in the middle of something...or vice-versa? That Nvidia Optimus program is notorious for being glitchy. Such a sudden change could also cause the drivers to corrupt and explain the BSOD. But that's just my ramblings...

 

Thanks, Radji, that does make some sense and I'd heard that about the sw-graphics... I was basically writing large nandroid backup files to a cwm bootable mSD card. The files are stored on my primary storage drive, which is the secondary non-bootable drive in my lappy. Also on others for redundant back-ups, but I primarily use this one.

Whocrashed basically came up with a similar conclusion - corrupt driver. And having played a bit of Skyrim last night after posting, it is more choppy and not as smooth as it was prior to this. Could just have been in the specific dungeon I was in, but it seems off. I guess I should try and update to the latest nVidia driver my R3 will accept.

Ugh, the thread search for this is always a pain. Would anyone be willing to point me to the thread that has the latest good tested driver that will work for the 560m? Am looking in the meanwhile, but I know from experience I'll be looking for quite some time so a shortcut would be awesome!

 

Maybe the card failing is a blessing in disguise...ask for a better one. Maybe u would get bumped.

 

The 560m should support the Nvidia verde package? Just go to Nvidia.com and enter your card, newest official is like 301.40 or something.

As for your reseating question, you don't need to remove the heatsink. Just remove the heatsink fan and it will come out with the card. Grab card and pull up at the end, now grab the heatsink and pull that edge of the card out gently, then grab other side of the card and pull that edge out. Voila. Look at some youtube videos of changing MXM cards first so you know what to expect.

 

Thanks again Yoda. Yes, I can use the verde drivers, but I read the latest versions can sometimes be flakey w/ m17x R3's? So I usually go for the most recent that others have validated, I think I subscribed to that thread actually. LOL I need replacement memory for my head. X] Thanks for prod to my memory, I've found it now.

Hopefully just updating the driver will do it. really don't feel like reseating the card. Crossing my fingers.

Whocrashed indicated I should check for an updated intel graphics driver too. I guess I'll go to intel's site as I've not seen anything come through windows updates. Anyone had any issues with updating the intel graphics driver on an R3 before?

 

I have never had trouble with the WHQL verde drivers, the beta ones often have problems. Best bet is just to download the newest WHQL Verde package from Nvidia, it should work fine, and the 300 series adds some sweet new features like FXAA and Adaptive Vsync.

 

OK, this is really frustrating. I can't access any of my subscribed threads anymore, they won't show under my profile.

Please, what is the latest WHQL Verde driver then? Is 301.42 current?
I go to nVidia's site and when I fill out the form, it sends me to 292.xx, but I know I had a 300 verde driver at one point, and the 301.42 does say it supports the 560m.

Am never good with change, but am disliking the new vbulletin upgrade less as time goes on.

Edit: Isn't it always the way, now that I've griped about it, I found my subscriptions. Meh. Face/palm. Should be able to find the latest driver version from there. Thanks again for all your help, Yoda. + Rep! Owe you some when I can give to you again, too! =)

 

Interestingly enough the 301.42 are not showing up in search for me either. Here is a direct link to the them.
Drivers | GeForce
Perhaps they are about to release another set of WHQL drivers so the search is kinda wonky right now or something.

 

Think I found it same time you did, Yoda. =D And thank you yet again.
Well, did the clean install, we'll see what happens. Maybe if they do release a new one soon I'll try installing it without the 3D vision drivers. Don't need 'em anyway and if they continue to throw errors I might be better off. =)

Off to look for an intel update. =)

 

First go to dell drivers website and look for r4 drivers...download the drivers mentioned as 302..... It would say its meant for 680m but its not just for that. I am using 580/675m card. And I am running the said driver. At the moment since you are trouble shooting just get this clean slated driver.

If that doesnt work I suggest you back up your current system and re install the OS fresh. See what happens. It would be a faster method. And be careful when you use drive sweeper..its NOT PERFECT AND CAN REALLY MESS WITH YOUR REGISTRY ETC.