Weird things happening...

[Pigas]

Hey all, this is my first post, i am absolutely desperate.

I own an alienware m17x , with and AMD Radeon 6xxxHD series. windows 7. I am not that much of a computer expert, i just love gaming, hence the alienware.

Last night, i shut down my pc. When i turn it on, my resolution is 800x600 and i notice something is going extremely wrong. First thing that comes to mind is drivers for the graphics card, maybe they rolled back. Funny thing is, when i go on device manager, my graphics card wont show up. It only shows the Intel 3000 on it. I run World of Warcraft. It would barely run it on minimum speccs. I then came to the conclusion that i am playing without a graphics card-.-. I gave up, turned off the pc. I wake up the next day, turned on the pc, everything was back to normal again. I gamed for 12 hours, not a simple problem or overheat. I then restart the pc for some windows updates, POOF, no graphics card on device manager once again.

I need a saviour.

Kind regards,

Pigasios Michael

 

[Asylum]

Sounds like your graphics card is going out to me.

Are you getting any colored dots or tears in your graphics when it was working?

 

[TRWOV]

Sounds like an Enduro issue. I would reinstall the HD6000 drivers and the Enduro updates.

 

[Pigas]

Nothing, it works like a charm when it is actually working. I can tell when its working because it displays it in the device manager.

 

[Pigas]

TRWOV, I uninstalled and reinstalled my drivers, nothing. The fishy thing though is that when i download the auto detector from the AMD website, i tells me that it cannot detect the required hardware in my OS

 

[TRWOV]

You could also try fn + F7 to disable Enduro and set the HD6000 as the permanent GPU (no switching back and fort between the Intel IGP and the Radeon GPU).

 

[Pigas]

Tried that, in order for the pc to give me that option there needs to be 2 available GPU. At the moment of failure, there is only one. As a result the option is not given.

 

[TRWOV]

humm.... maybe the "Nuke it" option? I'm out of ideas.

 

[fullinfusion]

Dont be shy what gpu is it besides a 6xxx?

Id pop out the motherboards bios battery for a few min then re-insert and re-start the rig and see if that fixes it.

To me it sounds like the bios is fubar atm.

 

[TRWOV]

What drivers are you using? Alienware's or AMD's?

 

[Pigas]

Well..its an i7-2670QM CPU@ 2.2 GHZ. That is as much as i can find right now since i cant get my graphics card info. Not showing up anywhere on the pc nor checks i run.

 

[Pigas]

Alienware redirected me to Dell, Dell redirected me to AMD.

 

[fullinfusion]

Well..its an i7-2670QM CPU@ 2.2 GHZ. That is as much as i can find right now since i cant get my graphics card info. Not showing up anywhere on the pc nor checks i run.

Like I suggested reset the bios and see if it's all good.

If not remove the gpu's driver and re-install the AMD one.

 

[Asylum]

Have you tried a system restore to an earlier date.

Try going back to a date where you know it was working fine.

 

[Pigas]

*SHY* How do i reset the bios? As i said i dont know much.. close to nothing.

 

[TRWOV]

Since it shows up at random I'm leaning towards it being a driver/OS issue. Maybe the GPU driver call times out and Windows starts without it.

It happened to me once with an USB 3.0 card reader. Once in a while it wouldn't start on Windows 7 and had to reset for it to show up. Using the Event Viewer I learned that the USB 3.0 driver was taking too long to initialize (Event ID 102). I suspected that Windows just went on without it on some occasions.

*SHY* How do i reset the bios? As i said i dont know much.. close to nothing.

On a laptop you'd have to open it and remove the CMOS battery but of course I bet you'd lose your warranty with Alienware. In your case I'd go into the bios (press DEL, ESC or F2 at startup, every manuyfacturer has its way) and load the "fail safe defaults" or whatever name they choosed.

 

[Asylum]

System Restore is located here.

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Recovery

Click open system restore once there.

 

[Pigas]

Your explanation makes sense. Whats the solution to that problem? If that is the case?

 

[TRWOV]

Your explanation makes sense. Whats the solution to that problem? If that is the case?

Sadly, I didn't find one. The issue corrected itself after upgrading to Windows 8 but that was because W8 has built in USB 3.0 support (doesn't need drivers).

 

[Pigas]

Meh.. Restoring now, will let you know of the results. Ps is it possible to purchase and install windows 8 on the spot?

 

[Pigas]

Restore made it worse:O got me back to the point that nothing worked

 

[jcgeny]

did you used gpu-z ?
it can find cards that windows does not .

may be a power connector has unplug from the ati , check that . if it is not the case unplug and replug the ati hd6k .
beware that some pci-e slot have a lock to fix vga card , you have to push it "gently"

in case that does nothing , ask for a rma

 

[Pigas]

Dont feel confident opening uo the pc. The restore caused for both the graphic cards not to display on device manager. Ill try alien restore tommorow

 

[RCoon]

maybe the "Nuke it" option?

Nuke it. (in case OP does not understand, fresh Windows reinstall)

 

[jcgeny]

that should be better to boot with a cold pc , retry the restore if you see nothing

check the monitor and cables , may be try to connect to all your vga-connectors to find the one that is on