My Video Card Has Disappeared

Was directed here by someone that thought this might be a good place to get some help.

I recently purchased an M17x from Alienware. All was well, I had it sitting on my desk and a 2nd 17' LCD to do dual monitors. I had no issues. I recently went to GenCon and in so doing took my laptop along. I have now arrived home, went to plug in my 2nd monitor and... nothing. Nada. Its just a black screen. Not the 'no signal' bouncy box, but just the black screen with the little yellow light flashing on power like it does when the computer is off. Tested it on another PC, monitor works fine.

I went into my device manager and noticed that my only display adapter was listed as: Nvidia Geforce 9400M G.

There is a distinct lack of my GTX 260M. I went to Alienware's website. Downloaded the driver package for the 260M on the M17x. Uninstalled all my Nvidia drivers. Installed the new drivers. Did all the restarting.

Still just the 9400M showing up and still doesn't acknowledge the existence of my 2nd monitor. My system specs are below. Can any tell me what the hell is going on?

 

do you have an LCD monitor splitter? I know my dad has to have one when he runs his
the splitter goes like this: from video card to Monitor one and then to monitor 2
also do you have it enabled top run dual monitors? if not go through the nVidia set up/customization thingy and piddle around

 

No splitter and I didnt use one before when it did work. I went into the nVidia control panel but even using the force recognition it doesn't find the 2nd monitor or acknowledge its plugged in.

Its like the computer forgot that it had a graphics card.

 

Hi Madadh,

It reads like your M17 is an awesome machine. It has multiple video drivers depending on how the laptop is used. In non gaming mobile mode it powers down the discrete graphics GTX 260M drivers and only uses the integrated graphics Nvidia Geforce 9400M G drivers.

from page 21 of the manual...

NOTE: The external display connections in your Alienware notebook are
connected to your discrete graphics card(s). When you want to use an
external display device, turn off the integrated graphics (<Fn><F7>). This
will active the discrete graphics in your computer, and enable the external
display interfaces.

you can download the mobile manual from-

http://support.ap.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/M17x/en/index.html

Techsent

 

Bloody marvellous. I didn't realize it would completely remove the 260M from the Device Manager list when it 'switched'. I'll try this when I get home and report. Thanks.

 

welcome

and thanks for your posting, as it taught me something new too

Techsent

 

Well that didn't work. I tried hitting it once and rebooting. Tried holding it down for a good 5 seconds then rebooting. Tried hitting it multiple times.

Nada. Still just the damn 9400 showing. Just to see if the function keys were indeed function, I used the web cam function and enabled/disabled. Worked. (tho it is really poor set up because it disables both the webcam and the video part, but only RE enables the webcam).

Is there some way for me to go in and fix this manually? I'm going to be extremely irritated if my videocard disappeared and the only way to get it back is a function command that doesnt work.