M15X (bought 04/2008) not recognizing GPU

SPECS:
Alienware Area-51 M15X (purchased April 2008)
Intel T9300 @ 2.5 GHZ
NVIDIA 8800M-GTX GPU
Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset family
Hitachi 200GB 7200 RPM HDD
OS Windows 7 Ultimate (64 bit)

I was running BOINC about 2 months ago (then on Vista), and I realized that it was not recognizing my graphics card. So I went on Nvidia's website and downloaded the latest CUDA drivers for my card, restarted, and for some reason it had booted me into my Intel Integrated Graphics chipset. I tried to hit fn-f7, and it gave me the whole "you are switching binary graphics, restart" bit, so I restarted. For some reason I was still in integrated graphics mode. So I tried installing the latest non CUDA drivers, assuming it was the drivers that made this happen. No dice. I tried installing the old drivers that I had originally had. No dice. Extremely frustrated at this point, I decided to just go ahead and clean install into Win7. This still did not help the problem, so I grabbed the recovery CD that Alienware gave me, and reinstalled Vista. This did not work either. So I went back to Win7, 64 bit, and stayed with it for a while, not bothering to try and fix the problem. Today though, I found a copy of Star Wars BF2 and really wanted to play, but my integrated graphics can't handle it, so I'm back to trying to fix this crap. I tried installing the command center, and the OSD driver, but now when I try hitting fn f-7 then hit "yes, restart now" an error pops up and says an error with the OSD driver has occurred, closing program. I can't for the life of me get this junk to work, so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

what you can do is go to alienware.com becuse you have a m15x and check the drivers from that site. Then Look on Notebookreview. http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...g-gaming-general-info-sticky-please-read.html and scan the fourm to see what geforce drivers are best for your system. Newest might not be the best. I would start off from the oldest from alienware.com and then try Newer drivers.

 

Did you reformat the system with a new OS? It wasn't very clear. Usually the problem is due to the order you installed the drivers. I don't know about the older drivers and their glitches but for the newer ones it usually goes:

1. Chipset
2. OSD
3. Video
4. Everything else
5. Command Center

I'm also confused. Should users be putting threads about Area-51 m17x and m15x in the Area-51 section or is the Alienware M17x or M15x ok?

 

I've reformatted three times: once from vista to Win7, then back to Vista with the Alienware recovery disc, then back to Win7 64 bit. Also, I've tried all of the video card drivers from Alienware's site, and none of them work. I even tried the original two year old drivers from Alienware. And I did use that driver install order Villosa.

 

Is there a way to disable the integrated card in the BIOS to force it to boot the discrete card.