Couple pieces of hardware not being detected on my AW18 Viking (2014) - OSD and GPU

I have a couple pieces of hardware not being detected on my AW18 Viking (2014). One is the OSD: Device Manager shows an "Unknown device" all of the sudden (HardwareId: ACPI\CPL0002, ACPI\VEN_CPL&DEV_0002). The other is the twin nVidia GTX 880m GPUs. Neither 880m shows up in device manager at all and neither shows up in the F2 BIOS at all. Under Discrete Graphics 1 & 2 the BIOS, it just shows "Not Detected." So naturally I am starting to think motherboard. Do you think it is worth sourcing a part myself from eBay or from Dell to self repair as the next step?





For the OSD controls: The volume, brightness , etc OSD controls aren't appearing on the screen, and haven't for a while. Yet the Fn control, despite the lack of visual feedback still worked, blindly. I never thought much of it because I switch back and forth with Hyper-V on Windows 8.1 Pro, and every time I do that the OSD and sleep would go away, so I didn't think much of it until I went to game the other day … that's when I noticed the cards weren't detected … initially I thought it was a Fn+F5 problem with the OSD software but after reinstalling the drivers based on the Dell document, the symptoms persisted.



Troubleshooting so far:

(1) re-install Dell drivers for Alienware 18

(2) re-seat battery

(3) re-apply BIOS A10, twice.

(4) re-seat battery

(5) re-install Dell drivers for Alienware 18.

(6) Apply BIOS A12, twice.

(7) re-seat battery

(8) pull both 880m GPUs. Boot without them. Re-seat both. No change.

(9) try GPUs one at a time in slot 1. No change.



Discrete graphics in the BIOS still shows "Not detected." Also there is no unknown, disabled, nor yellow-bang hardware in device manager -- I know my 880ms usually show up with the following hardwareIDs:
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1198&SUBSYS_05AB1028&REV_A1
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1198&SUBSYS_05AB1028
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1198&CC_030000
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1198&CC_0300 (first card)
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1198&CC_030200
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1198&CC_0302 (second card)


And the following Class GUID:
{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}

And nothing looks like it. So I don't think I'm just skipping past them in the listing. It seems unlikely both cards are bad. So combined with the OSD driver issue (ACPI\CPL0002), maybe it sounds like motherboard? Are new stock motherboards from eBay a good idea? Or is this something I should just buy through Dell spare parts?


So I'm just thinking through what I want to do. Worst case, I do nothing, keep this 32GB monster using Intel Integrated video as a Hyper-V workstation and wait & buy a Clevo in the winter/spring. Best case, I repair the 18 and probably still buy a Clevo. I'm leaning towards the self-repair(s). Of course, I browsed & searched the forum prior to posting.

 

I've had my GPUs simply disappear a couple of times. It was always some Nvidia driver problem. Crappy drivers actually killed one of my cards before. I did the following to get my GPUs recognized again:

-completely did a clean install of the Nvidia drivers, or

-used system restore to go back to a point where GPUs were recognized, or

-I even completely reformatted my HDD, and reinstalled everything.

I don't having any real experience with the OSD, but maybe if and when you reformat HDD it should work.

Good Luck

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. Try different drivers

 

Scanner,

I tried your suggestion. Oddly enough (to me at least), a fresh load of Windows 8.1 on a spare drive with a fresh load of the latest nVidia drivers corrected the problems. It even fixes my OSD problem.

I switched back to the original drive, and one of the nVidia GTX 880ms disappeared (I only saw a single 880m and SLI was not available). I switched back to the fresh drive, and all is good again (both cards and SLI).

Thank you!


(PS: this reminds me why -- having a Samsung 18 inch PLS panel and nVidia display adapters -- why I am avoiding Windows 10 and PrecisionX. These nVidia drivers are really something. The control these drivers and Windows itself have over MY hardware is un-real.)