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54188
October 5th, 2015 19:00
Alienware 17 (2013) - System does not detect the dedicated GPU
Hi Everyone,
I own an Alienware 17 (2013) [i7-4900MQ, GTX 780M, 32GB RAM, Win7]. Two weeks ago, while playing, I noticed a dramatic and very uncharacteristic performance drop. I finished the match quite confused, but attributed the event to the very hot air in my room - it was indeed stifling after all.
The second day I had the same performance issues while trying to play. I noticed that the CPU fan was going full throttle. Upon checking the Device Manager I saw there just Intel HD 4600 under Display Adapters. I restarted a couple of times and the system seemed to see the NVidia card.
I took a break and put the laptop in sleep mode. When I resumed, the GTX 780M had a yellow exclamation mark in Device Manager. I downloaded the latest drivers from NVidia's website, installed them, and after rebooting Device Manager only had Intel's integrated video card under Display Adapters. I kept restarting until I could see the NVidia card again. It was yet again shown with a yellow exclamation mark. And I cycled through the same steps I just described several more times.
This went on for days I think. Somewhere on the web I found folks who recommended using a DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) utility to clean up all the old drivers and what not and sort of install everything anew. So I decided to try it. Now, it is worth mentioning that up until this point, my bios would see the dedicated GPU even when it was not shown in Device Manager. (I would alternate between two different boot drives Win7 / Win10, so every time I entered the legacy boot setup I did see the video card being detected).
After using the DDU, Windows recognized the “new” hardware and installed some generic drivers. I went ahead and updated those to the latest ones from NVidia. I had to restart afterwards, and once I did I was back to square one again: exclamation mark in Device Manager. I kept uninstalling and installing drivers. Sometimes my GTX 780M would show up with that exclamation mark, other times it would not appear at all. It took a lot of restarts to get it to properly jive with the GPU.
I continued my search for answers online. One guy wrote that he was able to resolve an extremely similar situation by physically reseating the GPU. After learning that in my laptop model it can be done without removing the heatsink from the video card, I went ahead and removed and then replaced my GTX 780M. (It was scary.)
I did it without DDU first. Then I did it again using DDU right before reseating the NVidia card. After multiple restarts I was at last able to get my system to see the GPU and everything worked fine for a day or two. Again, after a shutdown (same applies to sleep) the issue resurfaced. By this time I also noticed that in bios the Dedicated Video Card field was saying “Not Detected” (as opposed to earlier, when bios saw the card despite its absence in Device Manager).
It took a lot of restarts to get that NVidia card to reemerge. It seems to randomly appear. (I was unable to determine any patterns unfortunately.) But the odds of it being detected are not great, at the very least. Somewhere along the way I also flashed my bios to AW14. Even when the bios says that the discrete GPU is not detected, the Preboot System Assessment assigns a green check mark to its “Video” category. Unless, of course, it’s just testing the integrated video card.
I am posting this in the hope that someone has dealt with similar problems and would be able to help in understanding what the cause may be and what can be done to fix it.
Needless to say, I’m grateful for any efforts to help.
Thanks a lot.
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AndrewSi
4 Apprentice
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901 Posts
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October 6th, 2015 07:00
Hi.
I really hope Windows 10 has not done this to your GTX780, they seem to be prone to this and it may be having a dual boot system has saved you from it completely.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/windows-10-nvidia-whql-drivers-are-killing-alienware-and-clevo-lcd-panels.779449/
But you may also just have a faulty GPU.
Alienware - Rodrigo
9 Technologist
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4.4K Posts
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October 6th, 2015 09:00
Hi,
When it shows the exclamation mark on the Nvidia driver in Device Manager, double click it and please confirm what error message it shows on the description. Also, in the desktop, can you try the FN + F5 keys and confirm if you get a message.
K2Vm4n
2 Posts
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October 6th, 2015 12:00
I remember seeing at least four different errors in Device Manager:
a. Code 1 (This device is not configured correctly.)
b. Code 10 (This device cannot start.)
c. Code 14 (This device cannot work properly until you restart your computer.)
d. Code 43 (Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems.)
These codes were not all displayed at the same time of course. They would just replace one another as I cycled through driver removal, installation and restarts.
Fn + F5 doesn't seem to do anything. I did try it repeatedly as many Alienware owners indicated that as a potential solution. I have no reason to believe that I’d have to reinstall the Onscreen Display thing since the other Fn + F-key combos work fine (eject, volume up / down, touch pad, etc). When I press Fn + F5 I don't get any prompts or dialog boxes - the OS doesn't react to it in any visible way. But I am rebooting (as described in online comments) and after restarting there are no changes.
This morning (after having the machine shut down and unplugged through the night) the GPU was detected from the first boot. Win 7 installed a generic driver and requested a restart. I installed the latest NVidia driver and rebooted the machine. Everything was okay up until I was 3-4 minutes into a test game, which is when it went BSOD on me. This is the info Win 7 provided about the crash:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 116
BCP1: FFFFFA8027B12010
BCP2: FFFFF880073BA01C
BCP3: FFFFFFFFC000009A
BCP4: 0000000000000004
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 256_1
I also have the dmp files if necessary. (I am using the plural because these crashes occurred every time I'd play 1-5 min, or if I would engage the GPU through Adobe After Effects CC.)
However, the curious thing is that every single time after recovery bios would detect the GPU and Win 7 would show it under Display Adapters as working properly. (A note here: I noticed the bios used to recognize the dicrete GPU as “GTX 780M” before, whereas now, if it does detect it, it appears as “Nvidia GFX” – not sure what caused that.)
After one of these recoveries I booted into Win 10 (I have the OSs on different drives). Device Manager showed all was fine. So I launched my game and played for nearly an hour. (It may be worth mentioning that about 4-5 minutes into gaming I saw an artifact for 4-5 seconds – that has never happened before. See picture below.) After an hour of playing the game stuttered briefly and Win 10 alerted me that the display drivers failed or something and were able to recover. Minutes later I got a BSOD (this time on Win 10) with the error VIDEO_MANAGEMENT_MEMORY_INTERNAL. And once the system recovered and booted back into Win 10, Device Manager again only shows Intel HD 4600 under Display Adapters.
I hope all this detailed account is not too tiresome to review. I just don’t want to miss something that could point a knowledgeable person in the right direction. I would really like to understand what is happening and exhaust all possible solutions before buying another video card. (Well at the moment I am not certain that even replacing the GPU will resolve the issue.)
Artifacts (while playing in Win 10):
Alienware - Rodrigo
9 Technologist
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4.4K Posts
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October 7th, 2015 16:00
Hi,
It does sound hardware related. If your system is in warranty, send me a PM with your service tag for further assistance.