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Solved Grahpics Card Drivers Not Working

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Dracentis

PCHF Member
Oct 19, 2019
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About a week ago, I got a new laptop. Specifically, a refurbished Lenovo Flex 5 from Amazon. (Link)
It came with an NVME SSD, i7-8550U CPU, 16 GB of memory, and an Nvidia GeForce MX130 GPU. Everything was blazing fast compared to my previous laptop, and I enjoyed the speed for productivity purposes. However, when I tried to run a few games I was getting considerably lower performance than I was expecting. I opened Task Manager and realized that my GPU was sitting idle while the integrated graphics was pinned at 99%. Thinking that it might be a driver issue, I looked online for ways to update my GPU drivers. I ended up uninstalling all the drivers associated with the device. Now it only shows up in device manager as '3D Video Controller' and I can't get any drivers to install correctly.

Here's what it looks like in device manager:
Device Manager.JPG
Device Manager2.JPG


Attempting to Update Drivers results in this:
Auto Driver Install.JPG

This does not fix the problem, even after multiple restarts.

I tried using Nvidia's Automatic Tool:
GeForce Drivers2.JPG

It failed with this screen:
GeForce Fail.JPG


I tried using a driver installer specific to my graphics card:
GeForce Drivers.JPG


It failed with this screen:
GeForce Fail2.JPG


This is a relatively new computer, so I'm pretty sure it's not a hardware failure. I simply don't know what to do to fix this.
 
Why not get your driver from LENOVO

This could be the right place as you havent supplied the full model details of your laptop.

Okay, I tried Lenovo's driver update and I got the same error from before:
fail.JPG

It can't seem to find the graphics card. Also, here's the full name of my laptop: Flex 5-1570 (Type 81CA)
Additionally, I tried LENOVO's diagnostics on the video card and got the following message:
diagnostics failure.JPG

I still have a warrenty for this laptop; should I try sending it in for repairs?
 
I opened Task Manager and realized that my GPU was sitting idle while the integrated graphics was pinned at 99%
That is normal behaviour, the dedicated GPU only kicks in when you are gaming or watching videos etc, this is to save power when running the computer on the go which means that you cannot connect to mains electricity.

Thinking that it might be a driver issue, I looked online for ways to update my GPU drivers.

Once Windows has been installed, you install the necessary drivers for the MB and other hardware and then leave well alone, drivers should not be allowed to auto update and you should never update any driver/s unless the new drivers are intended to resolve a specific issue that you are having, installing new drivers unnecessarily can actually cause you the very issues that any new drivers are intended to resolve and uninstalling the new drivers may not resolve the problem/s that installing the new drivers has caused.

Depending on priority it can take many months before the driver provider releases any fix and they sometimes do not even bother.


See if the info here helps, hopefully the Lenovo OneKey Recovery option is still available to you, being a refurbished item means that it may not be though.
 
Okay, so I did not still have access to Lenovo OneKey, as far as I could tell it was not installed on my computer. However, the reset button was still on my computer, and I used that to trigger the Windows standard reset, which reinstalled windows. However, this didn't fix the problem, and now the device doesn't even show up in the device manager.
Device Manager.PNG
 
Suggests that it could be hardware related if it still doesn`t work after resetting Windows but can I ask that you go back to the Device Manager, click on the > next to the Audio inputs and outputs icon at the top, grab a screenshot and then attach it with your next reply for us.
 
Thanks for the screenshot, was hoping to see an option for Nvidea HD audio in the list which would have confirmed that Nvidea hardware was at least detected.

Lets try another approach;

Download then run Speccy (free) and post the resultant url for us, details here, this will provide us with information about your computer hardware + any software that you have installed that may explain the present issue/s.

To publish a Speccy profile to the Web:
In Speccy, click File, and then click Publish Snapshot.
In the Publish Snapshot dialog box, click Yes to enable Speccy to proceed.
Speccy publishes the profile and displays a second Publish Snapshot. You can open the URL in your default browser, copy it to the clipboard, or close the dialog box.
 
Okay, good news! I found a setting in the BIOS:
setting-min.jpg

Now the Graphics Card shows up in Device Manager again, but without any drivers:
Change.PNG

After installing drivers it works normally!
success.PNG

Everything seems to be working as expected now!
Thanks for the help!
 
Great news, glad we were able to help and thank you for letting us know that you no longer require assistance (y)

You are welcome btw :giggle:

NB: Final nag from me, make sure that you create a new system restore point for the now stable settings and please stay away from tweaking things and most certainly no updating any drivers when the computer is working as it should be, my canned info again below regarding needlessly updating drivers;

Once Windows has been installed, you install the necessary drivers for the MB and other hardware and then leave well alone, drivers should not be allowed to auto update and you should never update any driver/s unless the new drivers are intended to resolve a specific issue that you are having, installing new drivers unnecessarily can actually cause you the very issues that any new drivers are intended to resolve and uninstalling the new drivers may not resolve the problem/s that installing the new drivers has caused.

Depending on priority it can take many months before the driver provider releases any fix and they sometimes do not even bother.
 
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