Alienware M17x not recognizing ATI display drivers??

Ok I am about running out of patience with this m17x video card problem so I thought I would come to the GURUS to seek help and assistance. After about 2 hours of searching thru the forum I could not seem to find a solution to the problem I am having. It isn't as simple as uninstalling, cleaning and reinstalling drivers (which i have tried nearly a dozen times) but it seems that the system does not even recognized the video card at all anymore.

I am using the CrossFireX - ATI Radeon HD 4870 and all the rest of my specs are listed in my signature. Ok so here is what happened: My system has run completely fine for the last 5 months since I received it. A couple days back when doing a routine reboot the chkdsk message came up and started the count down. I let it count down to 1 and it just froze at 1. I let it set there for bout 15 mins and then when nothing had changed, I manually rebooted it. (The keyboard was not responding). After reboot got the chkdsk countdown again but after one there was a flicker and then windows started normally. So for the next few days off and on..when rebooting I always got the chkdsk but sometimes it would freeze and have to be restarted and other times it would boot right up.

So I ran Windows Repair on the system and it fixed the chkdsk problem but on its inital boot after the repair, I got an ATI Display driver is missing error. Please install the ATI drivers for this graphics card. At this point, my HDMI port and serial port for dual monitors stopped working and I can not get anything working since.

The more troubling thing is everytime I install the ATI drivers and control center...it now doesn't even show up under the start menu. Under Device Manager the Display adapters lists Standard VGA Graphics Adapter and under Monitors it lists: Generic Non-PnP Monitor. This happens no matter what drivers I try installing. I have grabbed every ATI driver off of Dell's site and went and tried a few beta drivers off of ATI's site.

I am completely out of ideas besides completely reformatting everything and starting from scratch...however I have a project i desparately need to work on so I have no time for a complete wipe and restart. Can anyone help me out or give me some suggestions. If you need any more information that I haven't provided please let me know! Thanks.

 

Oh one more thing. I did upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate instead of Pro. I am not sure if that matters so wanted to mention it. Thanks.

 

Have you tried running the diagnostics?
This sounds like it may be a hardware issue.

 

Yea as danp mentioned, this is most likely a hardware issue, i recommend calling up the manufacturer of your card and if you still have a warranty on yours, they should replace it for free.

 

GO to bios, and make sure that the discrete GPU is not Disable. Make sure you enable it. After enabling the discrete GPU, you'll boot into widows, and then you install the ATi driver.

 

Ok I am going to check for the GPU first and then run the diagnostics on it and see where I stand. Thank goodness it is under warranty since I have only had it for 5 months. I will let you all know the results in a few. Thanks for taking the time to help.