Laptop Artifacting

tldr. I reset my laptop and it is not detecting my gpu. It does not show in dxdiag but it does show in bios/hwinfo. If I try to install nvidia drivers, my laptop will just permanently artifact and send me to windows recovery options. I can recover to before installing drivers. In display, it shows Microsoft Basic Display Adapter.

Laptop ASUS ROG GL702VMK
i7-7700HQ
GTX1060

Full story: I wanted to change the thermal paste of my laptop, so I opened it and did it. I cleaned with a 99% isopropyl alcohol and used these graphite thermal pads https://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Cooling-Graphite-Thermal-Pad/dp/B07CKVW18G. After this, it started artifacting in the boot and restarting, so I went to bios and reset it since I had undervolted the laptop before. Then, it would only go past the rog logo and restart into windows recovery options without letting me reset or recover it. If I tried to go to windows, it would throw me Critical Process Died BSOD, so I took it to a laptop repair shop and got the hdd replaced. While booting it up again, i would see the same artifacting, but this time it would actually go to windows. I reset it just in case and do the windows updates. After this, I try to download the Nvidia drivers since it is not showing on dxdiag, but it does show in bios and hwinfo. Mid-update of the drivers, when the gpu resets to apply the install I guess, it would just artifact freeze. I heard the install completion sound, so I go and shutdown the laptop with shortcut (Windows+D, Alt+f4, Enter). When I try to turn it on, it would artifact and then send me to windows recovery. I try restarting/shutting down the laptop a few times without succeed. After the first or second time, it would stop artifacting but would not go past the rog logo. It would restart again and send me to windows recovery. I did windows recovery and now I am back to being able to use my laptop without the GPU. Any ideas?


I changed the blue pads, then added the thermal pads after the photo.

 

Thats a sign that your GPU is either dying or its already dead either way you're pretty screwed because you would need to replace the entire motherboard and with BGA chips (CPU + GPU) the motherboard will cost about half of the value of your laptop.

 

I need to replace everything? Laptop turns on normally and I can use it except for the gpu of course.

 

That depends if your laptop has Nvidia Optimus which uses the Intel IGPU as the display instead of the Nvidia GPU.

 

Haven't seen anything like that on my laptop. Also my Intel GPU is disabled I believe. It is using microsoft's display adapter.

 

Then you're probably out of luck because if the GPU dies you will no longer have a display but still i suggest you get it repaired as soon as possible.

 

Can you elaborate on how I won't have a display? In dxdiag and device manager, it shows Microsoft Basic Display Adapter. So it is not using nvidia right? I will get it checked tomorrow for sure tho.

 

It still using it as the display even with the Microsoft Basic Display driver. Like i said its a sign thats the GPU is dying especially when the drivers refuses to install.