Device Manager doesn't show GTX 460M anymore

I'm in trouble, I tried to install the lastest Nvidia drivers and the installer kept hanging. I tried to revert back to the previous driver and it didn't work. I even tried using the original drivers from my original disc that came with the notebook and they hung too.

I tried clean install, manual install through device manager, etc. and nothing worked. I tried to uninstall the driver and it hung again. As a last resort, I used driver sweeper to clean all Nvidia display drivers from my system. When I rebooted, I was stuck in 800x600 and device manager nolonger recognized a GTX 460M. Windows only tells me it's a Standard VGA Adapter and it will not accept Nvidia drivers at all.

I have tried to update to automatically find new drivers and it says no new drivers for "Standard VGA adapter" were found. I tried to manually force it to use GTX 460M drivers by choosing hardware from a list, trying "have disk". Nothing worked.

I can't do anything to get Windows to see the card as a GTX 460M anymore. Is there anything I can do besides reformat? I am stuck in low resolution and I can't install any display drivers at all.

 

Have you tried System Restore?

 

Do a complete system clean install so that you have the 800 x 600 screen again, and then reinstall the VGA drivers from the CD that came with your computer. That should do it.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Does the BIOS know that you have a 460M installed? If it doesn't, then somehow your card/MXM board/motherboard is faulty and the problem doesn't lie in windows, and RMA-ing is in order.

If this *isn't* the case, then maybe a reinstall of your OS will help. It's annoying to do that though, I wish you luck. Had to do one myself just last night.

 

Did you by chance use CCleaner?

 

I agree on the system restore, if you have a recent one do that.

For Windows 7:

Right-click My Computer > Top left Click on System Protection > System Restore

 

I had a similar problem with the 8800MGTX card doing the same thing and not getting recognised and drivers not working/installing. I wiped the hard drive using Active KillDisk and reinstalled everything that resolved the issue.

 

Unfortunately, I had an SSD so system restore was disabled to minimize writes the drive.

I used Driver Sweeper and CC Cleaner and nothing worked.

In the end, I removed the heatsink and MXM card and reinserted them. Then I went into Windows/System32/DriverStore/FileRepository/ and had to take ownership of every single folder starting with NV from the SYSTEM. Then I had to grant permissions to everyone and run Explorer.exe as administrator and delete all of these.

Then I used the drivers from the disc that came on the CD that came with the laptop and the installer finished for the first time. Nvidia's install scripts are really messed up. If there are already Nvidia drivers in the DriverStore, it locks itself up trying to undo changes if something goes wrong and multiple copies of faulty drivers are stored in the system that Windows tries to use.

I am staying the hell away from 275.50 or any not WHQL drivers...That said 275.33 didn't work either, perhaps due to the SSD bug that Malibal #2 mentioned.