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Graphics card problems

5K views 7 replies 3 participants last post by  Daladra 
#1 ·
So I have an Alienware m17 laptop, from 2012 I believe. 16g Ram, Solid state hard drive, Nvidia 660, windows 7.
Not entirely sure what all to specify, but a few months ago, my computer froze while updating my driver.

Before I'm told to load a restore, this happened at a very unfortunate moment and I cannot. I screwed up, and don't need to be told that I did.

Anyway, the graphics card still works, but sub-par. When I start up, occasionally the graphics must have failed because it starts looking like I don't have any card installed and I have to restart, but then it's fine other than initially the resolution on my logon screen is wrong. That automatically corrects itself when I log in. On the surface, it seems perfectly fine, but when I start to play any games, I notice a few issues.
One, being when I play an old World of Warcraft server, if my laptop started up with the incorrect resolution, I will not be able to correct the resolution to 1920x1080. The max I will be able to do is 1600. However, if I restart, log in on a guest profile of windows so the resolution corrects there, then I log off and log into my main one, the resolution is fine. When I do this, my overall performance seems slightly better.
Also, I'm beginning to notice major performance issues. Where I used to be able to get 120fps, I am barely able to pull 40. (All in-game settings unchanged).

Any sort of factory restore is at the bottom of the list of things I want to do.

I have updated my drivers since then, and tried totally reinstalling the driver.
Thanks for any suggestions
 
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#3 ·
Have you ever cleaned the laptop ie disassembled and cleaned out dust? If not, that is the very first thing I would do. Gaming laptops run hot and generally have fans that move a lot of air. This tends to make them quite dusty inside. Once you clean the laptop, then uninstall any nvidia software ie driver, any monitoring program, etc. Install the new driver and make sure you check the "clean install" option.
 
#4 ·
I've already tried a clean install several times and have cleaned my laptop since then.
Although last night, just to make something of a liar out of me, I installed an update for Nvidia and now I'm running a little bit better- though still not fixed.
I may try another clean install soon
 
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