Pls help!! graphic card disappeared

twister23

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Jan 4, 2009
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Hello

I have a problem with my laptop ( Sony Vaio VGN-SZ3XP)
it has a Nvidia go 7400 graphics card and a an intergrated graphic card on the motherboard (i think)
You can switch between them using a hardware button

Anyways i have recently installed rivatuner (not very smart) and shortly after my Nvidia go 7400 disappeared from the system( not even in device manager). I cant swith to it anymore and now i am stuck with the lame integrated graphics. I was hoping to solve it by installing nvidia go 7400 drivers but they are not on the official website of nvidia and i haven't been able to find them

note that this might be a hardware problem as the card used to overheat a lot and the computer would often crashed (i solved this by opening the keyboard :D ), also i dont think it has much to do with rivatuner as i didnt even have enough time to overclock it, but perhaps it messed up the drivers ?

please help
 

twister23

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Jan 4, 2009
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thanks for the tip i cannot do system restore as it was suspended due to low disk space (stupid yet again) i uninstalled riva tuner doesnt help either, Sony software updater will not launch as i have the newest version so i am gonna go ahaed with reinstalling the gpu drivers thank again
 

twister23

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Jan 4, 2009
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i am beginning to suspect its a hardware problem because the card doesnt show up anywere ( not in device manager not other programs i downloaded) how can i tell for sure,
when i try to install drivers it says that no hardware was found for the driver and it aborts
 

frozenlead

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There may be an option in your BIOS that has disabled the discrete graphics card. Other than that, your GPU would be dead - but since you didn't do anything to it, I doubt that.
 
G

Guest

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I know you probably will not read this but I had the same problem on my HP, I could only use the integrated graphics and not the gpu itself. I had a 8400m nvidia in my laptop, what you need to do is wrap the laptop in some towels at least 3 to 4 with the laptop on letting it get hot you may even need to use a heated blanked or heating pad because you need it to get pretty hot. Do this for like 1 hr and a half to two hours than let cool this should work. what happens is the GPU can become onseated from the motherboard and doing this helps reseat it. hope this still helps you
 

ampedal

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Aug 27, 2009
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Backup important files and reformat is what I would do...

but then again I'm fairly OCD when it comes to my systems.

So fresh and so clean!