NVIDIA graphics card not detected.

[Roger2020]

Hi,

My graphics card has vanished! 😬

It’s a NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060 - 6.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1.

Failed attempt to resolve the situation so far includes:

1. 1. Checking it’s not defaulting to the onboard graphics in BIOS. There are no relevant BIOS settings...
2. 2. Uninstalling and attempting to reinstall NVIDIA GeForce Experience. The reinstall fails because it “requires an NVIDIA GPU“
3. 3. Looking for a Windows update to roll-back. Only found a Razer driver update which I can’t roll-back and probably isn't related

The laptop hasn't been dropped or opened, but my boys have been using it heavily for the last couple of days so loads of new software has appeared.

I could do with some inspiration to get it back.

Cheers!

 

[barlew]

Did you uninstall the GPU drivers with DDU before installing them again?

 

[Rakk]

Might be worth working out what they have installed on the system as there may be a conflict somewhere

I think this may be quite important - though may not be entirely easy to track down exactly what has been installed
Especially if its not suddenly not working after they've been installing stuff

 

[Roger2020]

Can you post you laptop spec from your order page please? Just helps to have a frame of reference for what other hardware being dealt with as, sometimes, issues can be hardware specific etc

Have you tried rebooting into safe-mode to see if it is detecting it properly? If your system doesn't have on-board graphics (most likely in an AMD system) then, if it can't find a GPU, it shouldn't display anything (as far as I know as it needs graphics to display anything on screen) which would likely point to a driver/software issue.

Might be worth working out what they have installed on the system as there may be a conflict somewhere

Optimus Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Intel® CoreTM i7 Six Core Processor 9750H (2.6GHz, 4.5GHz Turbo)
16GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060 - 6.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA 2.5" SSD, (upto 560MB/sR | 540MB/sW) Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC) 1 x 180W AC Adaptor
2 Channel High Def. Audio + SoundBlasterTM Cinema
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2.4 Gbps) + BT 5.0
2 x USB 3.1 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
OPTIMUS SERIES RGB BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]

 

[Roger2020]

Did you uninstall the GPU drivers with DDU before installing them again?

No. Someone started this process without me present. 😀🙄

I think this may be quite important - though may not be entirely easy to track down exactly what has been installed
Especially if its not suddenly not working after they've been installing stuff

A bunch of Steam games: Rainbow 6 Siege, Aim Lab, Among Us, Destiny 2, Five Nights At Freddie’s, Brawlhalla, PokeMMO
And some utilities: Razer Synapse, Discord, Uplay
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few I haven’t found out about yet...

 

[ubuysa]

No. Someone started this process without me present. 😀🙄

A bunch of Steam games: Rainbow 6 Siege, Aim Lab, Among Us, Destiny 2, Five Nights At Freddie’s, Brawlhalla, PokeMMO
And some utilities: Razer Synapse, Discord, Uplay
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few I haven’t found out about yet...

TBH I'd do a fully clean reinstall of Windows and drivers. If the GPU isn't detected in that pristine software state then it's almost certainly a hardware issue.

For the future, you might want to use something like Macrium Reflect to take an image of your system drive when everything is working well. That way, if something similar happens again (lots of new software etc.) you can restore the drive image to get a working system back and avoid the complexities of a reinstall.

 

[Roger2020]

TBH I'd do a fully clean reinstall of Windows and drivers. If the GPU isn't detected in that pristine software state then it's almost certainly a hardware issue.

For the future, you might want to use something like Macrium Reflect to take an image of your system drive when everything is working well. That way, if something similar happens again (lots of new software etc.) you can restore the drive image to get a working system back and avoid the complexities of a reinstall.

Remarkably, we’ve not been using this machine very long, so a reinstall wouldn’t be a total nightmare. I’ll check what reinstall capability it came with.

 

[Roger2020]

Well, none of them should lead to issues with a GPU but, as you said, you have no idea what has or hasn't been installed.

I would try using DDU to uninstall the graphics drivers and then reinstall them. If that doesn't work, then, unless someone comes up with a better idea, sounds like it will need a full Windows reinstall to see if it works properly with a completely clean slate.

At which point you may need to set some ground rules about installing things on your laptop or trying to fix things without you present

I’m new to DDU. I suspect it won’t work once the NVIDIA drivers have been uninstalled another way. Could I be wrong?

 

[Rakk]

Remarkably, we’ve not been using this machine very long, so a reinstall wouldn’t be a total nightmare. I’ll check what reinstall capability it and with.

I think a full reinstall is definitely the best plan - as if you haven't been using it long then its easier done now rather than later

But yeah I have seen disasterous effects caused by drivers being installed before - it was at work about 5-10 years ago - one person in the team was busy enjoying doing pranks on people (personally I thought it was all rather childish and was causing people to waste time trying to fix stuff that shouldn't need fixing) - anyways one time they added a dongle for a wireless logitech mouse to someone else's machine (a contractor as it happened) so they could play with the mouse and prank the other person - when said person got back from lunch and woke up the machine it instantly had driver conflicts and ended up in a boot-loop - IT had to come and completely reinstall Windows and yes this was the machine for the expensive contractor (so he couldn't do any work that afternoon and lost some work) - so yeah driver issues can cause big issues

 

[Roger2020]

At which point you may need to set some ground rules about installing things on your laptop or trying to fix things without you present

They are both pretty useful on PCs. I’m encouraging them to get stuck in on their own machines. Often the best way to learn is to make a mistake. It’s tricky when you’re travelling and they only have access to a laptop that’s suddenly non-functional.

 

[ubuysa]

Experience is the best teacher, but the bills can be expensive....

 

[Roger2020]

Progress, at last. Not much, but maybe a lead. After running DDU*, I’ve checked System information. I now have two Display drivers listed, but one of them is under “Problem Devices”:

• NVDIA USB Type-C Port Policy Controller, error code “Failure using the VxD loader”.

Let’s see where this leads...


* This was an incredibly painful process, because somehow my Microsoft password wasn’t accepted in Safe Mode, presumably because a local user exists with my Microsoft login but a different password. This was still the case after syncing my Microsoft account with local devices. I was running out of curses before I decided to just set up a fresh admin user.

 

[Roger2020]

OK - we‘re back in business! Once I’d run DDU, it was possible to reinstall NVIDIA GeForce Experience and download the GPU drivers. Whatever had interfered with them in the first place was corrected by the reinstallation and fresh download. I’m not convinced it’s properly fixed, but Windows can detect the graphics card and everything runs again.

Thanks for the help!

 

[barlew]

Class mate glad you sorted it.

 

[BlessedSquirrel]

* This was an incredibly painful process, because somehow my Microsoft password wasn’t accepted in Safe Mode, presumably because a local user exists with my Microsoft login but a different password. This was still the case after syncing my Microsoft account with local devices. I was running out of curses before I decided to just set up a fresh admin user.

This is exactly right, the microsoft login is actually not a local user account, there is a local user account configured also which defaults when you log in in safe mode. I believe you can still log in with your microsoft account, but you have to specify the email address as the username (I think).

 

[Roger2020]

Well that’s annoying - after a couple more glitches and reinstalled drivers, I decided to do a system restore to factory defaults. I then downloaded the GeForce installation package but it failed to install the drivers because it couldn’t detect an NVIDIA graphics card.

Not my boys‘ fault then. Could it be anything other than a hardware fault? The only other apps installed are Chrome, McAfee Total Protection, Steam and Logitech Options.