Graphics card detection issue

**lilfranky** · March 18th, 2012, 08:55 AM

I'm looking for some help cause this problem is driving me crazy. I have and AW laptop M17x purchased in Jan 2010. I have 3 graphics card on my computer 2x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M and 1 NVIDIA GeForce 9400. I have been having issues with it not detecting my 260's. So i cant run any driver updates. I have gone in and gone to safe mode and deleted the drivers and rebooted. Sometimes this would detect everything. now it wont even detect the 9400. So I then had to run a system restore just to be able to see the 9400. Even when I could get the 260's to detect I would play WoW for about 20 mins and either the screen would go black and I have sound or it would lock up. Then the action center flag pops up telling me that my NVIDIA Graphics Drivers has stopped working. The last time i was able to get all my cards to show was on 21 Jan 2012.

I am somewhat computer smart but I can't figure this out.

Please help!!

**osprey4** · March 18th, 2012, 09:31 AM

Hi Lilfranky,

Welcome to TechIMO.

You did not say which driver you're using. You should be using the nVidia driver. What does the BIOS show? I would suggest you try running the diagnostics. That will take the OS out of the equation and check specifically for hardware problems.

**lilfranky** · March 18th, 2012, 09:51 AM

Thanks for responding. The only card that is showing right now is the NVIDIA GeForce 9400. The driver that is currently installed is 285.62. I ran a diagnostic off the dell website and it did not pick up the 2 GTX 260's. I know the cards are there, just cant figure out how to get them to show again. When I try to install the current driver i get a error message tell me that it cant continue and that the graphic driver could not find compatible graphics hardware.

**lilfranky** · March 18th, 2012, 11:35 AM

Thanks for responding. The only card that is showing right now is the NVIDIA GeForce 9400. The driver that is currently installed is 285.62. I ran a diagnostic off the dell website and it did not pick up the 2 GTX 260's. I know the cards are there, just cant figure out how to get them to show again. When I try to install the current driver i get a error message tell me that it cant continue and that the graphic driver could not find compatible graphics hardware.

**osprey4** · March 18th, 2012, 03:17 PM

If the diagnostics do not show the other two cards, then there is a definite hardware problem, i.e., this is not a driver problem. I'm not too familiar with the BIOSes in these systems but can you check to see if there is a conflict or problem there? Maybe try resetting BIOS defaults?

**lilfranky** · March 18th, 2012, 04:56 PM

Here is a dumb question. How can I tell if there is a conflict? I will try to reset the BIOS to default.

**lilfranky** · March 18th, 2012, 05:28 PM

Well I reset the BIOS. It re-enabled my hybrid setting. Once that happened it detected both of my 260's. Did a diagnostic and they are running well. I still can't run the NVIDIA update driver. Still getting graphic driver could not find compatible graphics hardware.

I have not started playing WoW yet. So I don't know if something with the game is causing it to be kicked out of hybrid mode.