New Lenovo laptop GPU problem

acer_guy

Estimable
Feb 21, 2014
11
0
4,570
Hi to evreyone!

So recently I bought a brand new Lenovo Z710 (i7-4700mq, intel hd 4600 and nvidia gt745m). I then installed windows 8.1 (genuine) and all the drivers on the cd that came with the machine. But it seems there is a big problem with the graphics card. Nvidia gt745 seems like its not there. The Geforce Experience and nvidia control panel fail to recognize it, although it's there on Windows Driver Manager.

When I try to load a game (WOW) it crashes on the loading screen. "Display driver has stopped responding..." bubble appears and a minute or so afterwards, there is a bsod. The game works on the integrated card (intel hd 4600) when nvidia is disabled or its driver is uninstalled.

I tried reinstalling the drivers, downloading and installing the recent ones, removing all graphic drivers and reintalling them in different order, tried safe mode, changed some bios settings, but still nothing happened.
Could this be any kind of driver compatibility issue or simply a windows thing, or is it a hardware problem? Could the nvidia be faulty or the laptop itself?

I want to try anything before turning it back to where I bought it for a look... So your ideas will be vastly appreciated. Thanks!
 
Solution
Hey guys!

Great news! I finally fixed it! I am gonna post the procedure I followed, in order to try and help people with similar problems in the future.

After many tries working around with the drivers, it finally worked. What I did was unistall all gpu drivers from both intel and nvidia. Windows reverted back to its basic adapter, affecting resolution and performance. I cleaned the registry with CCleaner and then installed the nvidia driver FIRST via driver manager, without its software. No integrated drivers means nvidia can't install any software through the downloaded 344.14 .exe installer. So I exctracted the files from the .exe with 7zip and just used its driver.

Then I installed the latest Intel hd ones, normally using the...

acer_guy

Estimable
Feb 21, 2014
11
0
4,570
Hi, thanks for the reply.

I have already done that. I have also used all other drivers from lenovo site, and the latest vga ones from nvidia's and intel's sites. No combination of old, new, etc drivers seems to fix the problem.
 

acer_guy

Estimable
Feb 21, 2014
11
0
4,570
Hi Thanks for the reply.

Windows can recognize it, but not the nvidia software, and yes, this was the case since the beginning.
Also, another clue I may add is that there is no "switchable graphics" option anywhere in Windows (the option is on in the bios).
 

Prytanis

Estimable
Oct 13, 2014
2
0
4,510


Is is indeed nvidia's driver problem. I am waiting an answer from them since they do not accept that their drivers have some problem with many cards since 340.52 version. My lucky guess is that there is a conflict between pre-installed windows drivers and nvidia's ones but i do not know more in depth how exactly windows are built and if it's possible for such a thing to occur.
 

acer_guy

Estimable
Feb 21, 2014
11
0
4,570
Hey guys!

Great news! I finally fixed it! I am gonna post the procedure I followed, in order to try and help people with similar problems in the future.

After many tries working around with the drivers, it finally worked. What I did was unistall all gpu drivers from both intel and nvidia. Windows reverted back to its basic adapter, affecting resolution and performance. I cleaned the registry with CCleaner and then installed the nvidia driver FIRST via driver manager, without its software. No integrated drivers means nvidia can't install any software through the downloaded 344.14 .exe installer. So I exctracted the files from the .exe with 7zip and just used its driver.

Then I installed the latest Intel hd ones, normally using the .exe installer. No problems there. After that, when I was able to install the nvidia software, i did so by using its installer. And that was it! When I got to the nvidia control panel, there was the option in 3d global settings: Prefered Graphics Processor > High-Performance nvidia processor.

I finally loaded WOW without crashing or any kind of problem and I've never had any problems since then (running around 100fps in ultra graphics).

Thanks to all of you for your suggestions and ideas!
 
Solution