Video card not being detected?

danodomonkos · 13 Nov 2014

Hey everybody, i have an issue with my video card.

First off, i have a Packard Bell EN TK-81 laptop with AMD Radeon HD 7400M graphics card

So long story short my file system got corrupted, so i formatted my hdd reinstalled windows 7 64 bit. Now boot takes about 15 minutes to be done, and while im IN windows it's pretty slow. (problem is not the speed actually, its considerably okay, but that things freeze quite often)

Question no.1: can the video card cause this, or is it my hdd? (as i mentioned i had to reinstall windows cause of my hdd)

That being said... After i got into windows, i wanted to install necessary drivers. The driver for my motherboard is installed i think, because when i click on my MB in the device manager, and go to 'install updates' it says that drivers are up to date and installed.

Question no.2: is it possible that my chipset driver isnt actually installed, or it isnt installed correctly, thats why im getting all this trouble?

Next thing i wanted to do is to obviously install the video card drivers. My video card didnt show up in the device manager, i thought its normal since i didnt install drivers yet.
So i downloaded not the newest driver from amd.com, but that one which is listed as a necessary driver for this laptop on packardbell.com (it includes driver for the southbridge, for usb drives, and for some other stuff). Everything installed correctly, except for the video card driver.
(after the isntallation it says that a problem has occured, and i can view the log. Once i do that it says that it failed installing my vcard driver).

So im sitting here now, and i honestly dont know what i could do at this point. I didnt really found anything usefull on the internet, and one thing i can say for sure, that it IS my system not detecting the video card, because it sure didnt get ruined or something.

Dan

Edit: i forgot to mention, that since it doesnt see my video card, it is using this 'Standard VGA Graphics Adapter' with 16 mb vram. People in forums recommended to uninstall that thing, and then try to install an amd driver. I've done this and it doesnt work. Now device manager doesnt show anything related to video card drivers. Whats going on. Its driving me crazy.

Mark Phelps · 14 Nov 2014

Filesystem corruption and very slow system can both indicate a failing hard drive. This laptop originally came out in 2011, and if you bought it then, and have been using it daily since, it's very likely the hard drive is wearing out.

If I was you, I would find out what brand hard drive, go to the manufacturer's website, and if they have a drive checking app, download that, install it, and run it.

danodomonkos · 14 Nov 2014

Mark Phelps said:

Filesystem corruption and very slow system can both indicate a failing hard drive. This laptop originally came out in 2011, and if you bought it then, and have been using it daily since, it's very likely the hard drive is wearing out.

If I was you, I would find out what brand hard drive, go to the manufacturer's website, and if they have a drive checking app, download that, install it, and run it.

Alright, ill test my harddrive in a few hours. But still, why isnt my video card not showing up? Its quite worrying, and im afraid that this problem would still be on my neck if i bought a new hdd.

(Im, not an expert, but basically what you're saying is that a hard drive just simply 'weares out' if i use it regularly for years? well i wasnt expecting that :) )

Update: so appearently im not able to install anything right now. When i start an exe it says this:
'The setup files are corrupted. Please obtain a new copy of the program.'
[this doesnt apply for drivers it seems like, i could start the exe of my video card driver]

And other thing to note, maybe its irrelevant, maybe someone smarter then me (like you) can relate to something from this. So this afternoon i took out the screws from my laptop, and opened it up until i only saw the pure motherboard, did this to check if everything is okay on it, everything is connected and such (have done this plenty of times before). Put it back alltogether, then i went to the bios (to check once more if i have an option to set the primary graphics adapter, no such luck).
Then booted into windows (took a good 20 minutes), and the clock is now reset. It might be totalyl useless piece of information, but i figured it worths a note.

Mark Phelps · 15 Nov 2014

Update: so appearently im not able to install anything right now. When i start an exe it says this:
'The setup files are corrupted. Please obtain a new copy of the program.'
[this doesnt apply for drivers it seems like, i could start the exe of my video card driver]

Then booted into windows (took a good 20 minutes),

BOTH of these indicate a failing hard drive ...

danodomonkos · 15 Nov 2014

Mark Phelps said:

Update: so appearently im not able to install anything right now. When i start an exe it says this:
'The setup files are corrupted. Please obtain a new copy of the program.'
[this doesnt apply for drivers it seems like, i could start the exe of my video card driver]

Then booted into windows (took a good 20 minutes),

BOTH of these indicate a failing hard drive ...

The first one could be a problem with registries or something else (im trying to find an answer for it right now), and its quite inretesting, that the clock reset, and this 'corruption' error massage showed up after 4 days of me reinstalling windows, and just after i entered the bios, then left it. Strange...

For the second one, the reason could be the lack of drivers, can't it?

Im not trying to revive my hdd, in case it's dead, but wouldn't be so sure about it yet.

Right now if I could start .exe-s i would do a scan on my harddrive with Hdd Sentinel.
It would indicate in seconds if my hdd is bad or not.
Ill post an update as soon as i can.

Mark Phelps · 16 Nov 2014

The installations are failing because files are corrupted. While this can certainly include missing or corrupted registry entries (since, after all, those are files, too), it's more likely due to filesystem damage which has resulted in corrupted files needed to complete the installations. A failing hard drive will do this.

Lack of drivers would not cause a 20-minute boot; instead, they would cause hardware to not work properly. Very long booting is often caused by repeated reads of failing sectors. A failing hard drive will do this.

I didn't say the drive was dead; I said it was likely failing.

danodomonkos · 18 Nov 2014

Mark Phelps said:

The installations are failing because files are corrupted. While this can certainly include missing or corrupted registry entries (since, after all, those are files, too), it's more likely due to filesystem damage which has resulted in corrupted files needed to complete the installations. A failing hard drive will do this.

Lack of drivers would not cause a 20-minute boot; instead, they would cause hardware to not work properly. Very long booting is often caused by repeated reads of failing sectors. A failing hard drive will do this.

I didn't say the drive was dead; I said it was likely failing.

Im reainstalling windows now, and once im in ill run hard drive sentinel.

Is there any way that a software can fix my hdd in case its not completely bad, but it has just a few bad sectors? I think i've read something similar somewhere.

Sugarcake18 · 18 Nov 2014

One software you can try is a HDD cleaner link below will give you some options to try before replacing the hardware(you would have to do this while in windows so on another computer with your hard drive connected). you can also try running an sfc /scannow and chkdsk commands for bad sectors on a hard drive

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/fiv...erasing-tools/

danodomonkos · 21 Nov 2014

Sugarcake18 said:

One software you can try is a HDD cleaner link below will give you some options to try before replacing the hardware(you would have to do this while in windows so on another computer with your hard drive connected). you can also try running an sfc /scannow and chkdsk commands for bad sectors on a hard drive

Five hard disk cleaning and erasing tools - TechRepublic

Thanks, i was just looking for such programs !

So i failed installing windows, because it got stuck at 'completing installation' (I've read its a really common problem). So now instead of screwing around, well tomorrow ill borrow my friend's external hdd's cover, and connect it to my pc. I'll run Hdd Sentinel, and your program, also chkdsk i guess.

danodomonkos · 22 Nov 2014

okay... so i managed to detect my hdd plugged into my computer with hdd sentinel. according to it, my hdd's condition is 14 out of 100%, and i have 403 bad sectors(these are next to each other). I guess i cant really fix it with softwares (especially that i think these bad sectors were caused by physical damage), so ill just buy a new hdd.

I still dont know why my laptop didnt detect my video card tho (when i was in win).