Windows 7 - Graphic Card doesn't get recognized

Hello!

I bought my laptop awhile ago and it has 2 graphic card drivers in it. One Intel and one from NVIDIA. It all worked fine until I decided to upgrade my NVIDIA Graphic Card driver. I think this is the cause although it could easily be something else. Either way after the new installed driver there was no way to run ANY program with my NVIDIA card. It does get recognized in the "Device Manager" but no program seems to be able to acces the NVIDIA.

So I decided to download the lastest driver from the Dell site and install it. As that was the driver version I used back when it was working but I still seem to have the same problem. I don't really know what causes this.

I tried running a performance test to see if this program could use the graphic card but I seem to have no luck. Accesing the NVIDIA Control Panel and setting the desired program (or the global options) to automaticly run with my NVIDIA Graphic Card above anything didn't seem to pay off.

I have searched with google for awhile but it's hard to use google if you don't know what your looking for. I found some things but I can't even tell if there connected to this problem.

I would really like some help!

Thanks for reading.

~Lifell

Have you tried system restore?

I have no experience with the nVidia "Optimus" drivers. (They allow you to choose between the onboard Intel graphics, and ther discrete nVidia chip.)

Have you tried the latest drivers from www.nvidia.com?

Well point is. I don't have a system restore. I was playing a game that I thought just didn't work at first. I tried to solve it but it didn't help. It looked ugly, etc. So I thought I just needed to tweak the Control Panel to get it work. I've been busy with this for ages until I just forgot about it and just played the game.

Than I heard the game may not be working because Fallout 3(or NV) didn't work and this game uses the same engine. A lot of people on the internet encountered issues with this engine.

Later I just started another game up again and Steam gave a message "It didn't recognize my graphic card" and that I wanted to upload the information. Steam listed the Integrated one (Intel) and not my NVIDIA. The performance test also doesn't seem to detect my NVIDIA.

Yes I did. I also tried the beta version and after that didn't work I got back to my previous version downloadable on the Dell site. A really old version. So for the game to work I figured I may need to upgrade. I also thought the Dell version got something that the nvidia download doesn't have. I looked at files but couldn't see any difference.

When I installed the new version it seemed bugged and uninstalling the new version of the driver and installing the old also didn't seem to work.

Really, REALLY thanks for the replies. I'm starting to hate Optimus though. I thought it could have been something to do with this but I didn't know how.

I also still tried yesterday to uninstall the driver with Driver Sweeper and run Regcleaner and install again but I got the same result...

~Lifell