GT 555M driver not picking up card

yes so far

 

for anyone wondering if dell would consider downgrading your 3.0 to a 1.5, they say they wont and i even spoke to a supervisor to confirm. he fed me a few lines of crap about it about swapping parts (i said to specify which ones and he got all tongue tied) so that idea is out the window now.

my mobo has been pushed back 3 times now in a week...everytime they say theyll ship it id call and confirm and they give me another date and today was the third time.
im totally fed up at this point.

 

Wow.. I'm amazed this seems to be snow balling.

Update from my saga. I have been talking to the Dell tech for 3 days now, they seem to believe its a software problem, there was a new batch of 3.0gb cards released and the driver .inf files weren't updated to accommodate this particular card.

Sadly though, I have tried 2 modified .inf files sent to me from the Dell Tech, (open .inf in text editor, add Hardware ID profile for the card, replace original .inf with modified .inf file) , this lets the Nvidia driver see the card and install the driver, but after a restart I see this ..



Every time I think I might have success, I get this wretched (Code 43).. I am also a little concerned about how the Dell tech edited the .inf file, you can see the "%" symbols in the name of the device... If it were edited correctly and cleanly , it should just read "Nvidia GeForce GT 555M"

I hate to say this.. but after 2 laptops and 6 weeks of painful trouble shooting .. I am seriously considering a different model of computer.

 

hey atleast youre making progress.

would you be so kind as to email me the .inf file they gave you?


thank you kind sir!!!!

 

Just spent 2 hours on the phone while Dell remotely tried to rectify the problem I am having.

They essentially did exactly what I have been doing for the past 5 days, modifying the .inf files for various versions of the Nvidia drivers , adding the hardware ID for the card version in my laptop, and then installing the drivers with the adjusted .inf files.. to no avail.

I questioned how this can happpen, Surely Dell would not release video cards unless the driver software was tested and available for consumers to utilize ? .. He explained that "Nvidia constantly leave their new card model numbers out of their driver updates..." Not very reassuring.

@ supradrew - I'd like to hear how you went with the .inf files i sent to you, if you made them work ok then I will have some ammo to take to Dell to back up my claim that this is a hardware problem and not the drivers.

Ben.

 

could also be a bad v-bios but it definitely looks like a software problem to me if the card can be detected. Have you tried the modded inf from laptop2go? they have infs for every nividia card out and perhaps it will work.

 

ive tried the modded inf from laptop2go and it DID in fact install...BUT only when selecting "have disc" and choosing the gt555. nvidia software did not install because it still said no compatable.

ben gave me their modded .inf files for 2 different versions of the drivers...the 285 and one 290.36 i think. 285 was the only one that took...but basically you replaced the nvdm.inf file with dells custom one and then click the setup.exe and viola, all nvidia stuff takes and installs.

but heres the problem, after it takes, i have the ability to open nvidia control panel but settings do absolutely nothing because intel is still over riding and is in control. so, i opened device manager (no "!" errors) and i disable the intel driver and the screen goes black and nvidia never takes over.

i went back into update driver and "let me choose" then in the diag box it still shows standard vga and then under that it shows the %%%%%nvam%%%% looking file.

 

Thats part of the issue, you cant disable the intel driver without issues because the display is hardwired to run on the intel card even if you are using the gt 555m, the card isis displaying the content the nividia card renders. Even a modded bios wont shut down the intel card and display on the screen propely

 

interesting, so, untill theres demand for power it basically idles on the intel?

so i should try a game or a performance app to try and put a load on and see what happens?

i thought that with the nvidia control panel it should have overridden the intel when adjusting things like performance/quality and the color/saturation stuff...nothing changes (not even the spinning 3d icon...because when i did it before i had the issue, you could tell the difference in sharpness on the icon when you move the slider back and forth from performance and quality...now it does nothing to the icon)

 

Well dont try to delete the intel stuff and reinstall the nvidia stuff like last time it was working with no errors in the control panel, then try playing a game and see if optimus works properly

 

i too am interested to see if games still use the Gt555m even though you cannot select them, ALSO, are you all using the 3gig version?

 

recieved my M14x today, with BIOS AO7, and i did a fresh install of Windows and now i have no GPU showing. I have a 1.5gb if it means anything. Quite annoying

 

Does it show up in the bios though?

 

yeah it is showing up in bios. not really sure what to do

 

"New M14x for everyone!! " I say...

I might have mentioned this before, I have 2 M14x at the moment, One is the first one I received from Dell which had a faulty mother board, It took Dell 5 attempts to repair it because they kept bringing faulty replacement mobo's, after all the strip downs and rebuilds it looked like a second hand laptop so I demended a 1 to 1 replacement. Although this first one looks like its a year old, it runs beautifully, I can update and roll back to any version of the Nvidia drivers, so I delved in and had a look at the driver versions, the .inf files and the file structure for the drivers for the GT 555m.

Somewhere between November (when I bought the first one) and December (when I received the replacement) something big changed in the drivers, and also if you look at the Hardware ID its different to the current cards.





So I guess, this does lean towards the problem being a massive software stuff up driven by the hardware change. Dell have a lot of fixing to do to sort this out.. Its a real shame cause these laptops hyave a hell of a reputation as being some kick a$$ machines.

Can you guys post a screen grab for the hardware id of your GT 555m ?? Be interesting to see if its the same batch or a string of batch numbers suffering from this. If its the latter then perhaps it is a software problem.

(eg. the Hardware ID for mine is "10DE"... Thats the part of the code line that specifies the card model.)

 

Mine doesn't even come up in that screen shot. It just recognized as a VGA adapter

 

I have no problems with my 555M. Received my M14X in June 2011.

Posting HW ID pic.

 

Spoiler

I can already hear the rage beginning over this issue. Unless there is someway to change the cards GPU Id, Which could brick the card, a mobo replacement is the only way to fix this.

 

where it says "Standard VGA adapter" Right click / Properties /
"Details" tab / Use the drop down to find "Hardware ID".

Regardless of what it says in the Device manager , it will return the correct Hardware ID for the Nvidia card.

Ben.

 

Thanks .. "124D" Is the same Hardware ID as my card.

Anyone else care to share ?? Perhaps "124D" is the culprit hardware.

Ben.

 

If thats the issue dell just might be able to release a new vbios to switch the hardware id and fix the problem? Im not an expert though in this stuff so i could be wrong.

 

Well, finding all of this out makes me worry greatly for my m14x. Mine shipped out on the 9th with the 3.0 card.

It should be here any time up until the 20th according to the EDD. I am in Canada right now, so shipping up here might take a little bit.

I will let you guys know if mine has this issue. I REALLY hope it doesn't. Right now all I have is a 2 year old netbook for computing. I want to play some games!

Does anybody know if it IS possible for this to be fixed via a patch, or is a replacement MoBo the only fix? I have not heard good things about Dell tech replacing parts. The last thing I want is a used or broken part inside my brand new machine!!

 

Actually man, As long as you dont try and change the Nvidia drivers, I think you should be ok. Mine was running fine until I started messing with the drivers .. at least I think it was..

Best thing to do is switch it on, check the device manager and see if everything is functioning properly, and leave it alone , from what I have read this only happend when you try and mess with the drivers for the GT 555m. Happened to me because I chose to clean install everything.

This is a known problem at Dell, I dont think they have figured for sure if its software or hardware related, but from what I have been told its been escalated to a higher priority. We just have to wait.

 

Yeah, I realize that not messing with the drivers would not make the problem occur in the first place. However, I plan to be owning this computer and NOT buying a new one for another 3-4 years, possibly more if I can help it.

If I was going to be using it for a year or two, maybe I would be okay with never updating the drivers, but in a long term investment. . . not being able to ever update drivers with nvidia is kind of a block on the system considering that nvidia is always tweaking performance. Preloaded drivers may work for today's games or yesterdays games. . . its tomorrow's games I am concerned about.

If this IS something that can be fixed via a patch in the future, great. I won't worry about it now because by the time updating drivers will really cause any gain. . . it will be patched and fixed. But if it isn't. . . it would be nice to know that before my 30 days is up so that I can get a repair or replacement.

 

Totally understand, I bought mine for the same reason, I dont think you have to worry too much , you aren't going to get lumped with a Lemon of a Laptop.

There are a heap of people that essentially cant use their GT 555m cards in their M14x laptops at the moment, and Dell tech are scrambling to fix it, what ever the fix is for all of us , will certainly apply to you as well. You're just lucky in that you know what NOT to do between now and when the fix is released ... what ever it may be.

 

got it!!! all 100% for now! thank you for everyone here, espeically ben for the quick email and sharing.

i do not know if the file that ben gave me opened a window but untill i downloaded the 295.18 modded driver from laptoptogo.com/drivers i couldnt get anything to happen.

basically wipe everything nvidia, all folders in your C. next go into regedit and do the same, anything with software/nvidia-delete the nvidia folder.

now, go into device manager, check properties of your standard vga or %%nvidia%%-type forced installed driver and go into hardware id like we've been posting here already. leave that window up.
now go to laptoptogo and in the search you can see a device id looking type string with 2 blank boxes, copy your info into these. now check your windows version and search.
my first one was 295.18 with a red box to the right of the desc (meaning its been modded/not official) open this link and download driver, ALSO download the modded .inf file.

extract 295 to a folder of choice, navigate to display.driver and drag your modded nvam.inf file into it (replace the original) now back out and select setup.exe in the extracted folder. everything should take this time(if not you may want to try the version ben hooked me up with...may have an issue with standard vga device...mine said %nvidia% thanks to ben(ill post the files ben gave me to a hosting site if this doesnt work for anyone that has standard vga on their devices))
once it takes (no "cannot find device" error) select advance/custom install and check off "clean install" to wipe any remnants of anything left over. everything does its thing and restarts...and viola, im golden in device manager.


next i decide to see what optimus is doing and whatnot (search nvidia optimus tool and you can find this or something similar to tell you the state of the gpu...or you can open steam and try and launch a game, if no errors and smooth play, youre good...or in nvidia control panel, your 3d icon should change sharpness when adjusting...mine does as it should now)


not to worry just yet...this was just on a normal window, no demand for the card (optimus working like it should) here we go...

 

oh, and check out dells drivers now, there was a new one under video added on 1-11-12

 

Hey Andrew,

Nice work , I am going to try the driver Dell just put up .. Interestingly, this is the driver version (269.37) I sent to Dell yesterday when they asked me what driver version my first (and functioning) M14x was using.. I dont know if this is really a perfect solution, but if it gets our laptops functioning , it will do for now.

I'll let you know how I go.

Ben.

 

well looks like we lit a fire under their ...im just glad mine is fixed.

wish you and everyone else the best of luck, hopefully the new driver set will fix all...too bad they didnt care to call anyone with the issue about this update...f-ing dell jihad mfr's

 

The download link on the dell web site for the new (old) driver is dead.

Anyone have an alternative link ?? Or know where to find this stuff on Dell ftp ??

Ben.

 

Does this not working for you?

Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]

Just a quick summary of what happened to me:

I messed around with the Nvidia drivers as well and ran into the VGA hardware issue. But, I just now got back to having my machine recognize my GT 555M again by simply doing the following:

1. Download and install the latest BIOS (just released 1/5/2012
2. Download and install the latest Nvidia drivers on Dell's website (released 1/11/2012

This got me back to where I was BEFORE I started messing around with the GPU. Now that I have a resolution to that, I am going to go back to exploring how to get the latest drivers on my system again, haha.

We'll see how many times I have to repeat these steps before something works.

Never a dull moment with Dell and Nvidia!!!

 

No link doesn't work , as soon as I try and download it tells me the "File does not exist" ... This happened with the latest BIOS release aswell .. had to wait 48 hours before it came good... AGH!!!

 

Wow, that sucks. No clue why it would do that. Sorry, man!

 

I'll give it a go when I get back home in a few hours and try both of the fixes. I'm hoping to get it working the last thing I want after spending a small fortune on an Alienware laptop is to not be able to play games on a device dedicated for gaming.

Tried downgrading the bios to A05 but that didn't seem to help either.


Tapatalking

 

I tried to grab the file from the link as well to see if I could offer emailing it or hosting it online for you, but I too get the "file not found" text upon clicking the download button.

 

Hey muchachos...

If the link to the recently posted driver .....

Drivers and Downloads | Dell [Singapore]

.... is broken for you too... get it here..

ftp://ftp.dell.com/FOLDER99226M/3/NVIDIA_MULTI-DEVICE_A02_R316025.exe

(Sent from my Dell tech support Rep just now.)

Ben.

 

I'm no computer expert but after a good solid 4 hours of going at it, I've managed to finally, correctly install the latest and greatest GPU drivers for my GT 555M on my M14x. My display adapter was saying I had the "Standard VGA" thing so here's what I did:

1. Downloaded and installed the latest BIOS update from 1/5/2012: HERE
2. Downloaded and installed the latest NVIDIA driver on Dell.com from 1/11/2012: HERE
3. Cleaned off the NVIDIA drivers and registry from my system using Driver Cleaner Pro and CCleaner
3a. Once you've downloaded the set-up's and installed them, make sure you restart your computer, go into SAFE MODE, and then run both Driver Cleaner Pro (simply selecting "NVIDIA" in the drop down menu when launched) and CCleaner (simply select the "REGISTRY" category and clean it out (I'd do the recommended registry back-up when asked)).
4. Downloaded the latest modded driver along with the INF file HERE
5. Ran the "29518_win7x64" executable (it extracts a folder into the same folder you run the application)
6. Copied the INF file (named "nvam")
7. Navigated to "295.18_win7x64\Display.Driver" and pasted the INF file (overwrite the existing file)
8. Navigated to the "295.18_win7x64" folder and launched the "setup" executable
9. Watched my latest and greatest driver install onto my M14x

Hopefully this helps others who are in the same situation.

I'll be sure to update my post if I run into any issues.

P.S. I should note that I just received my M14x this past Tuesday, January 10th after ordering it on January 3rd.

Here's what I got when I ran "msinfo32" to verify:

 

This sounds quite thorough and seems as if it make work - I'll give this ago before i try any other method. The fact it's a fresh install makes me not worry about using CC cleaner/Driver Cleaner

 

FYI.. I just tried a straight forward clean and install of the latest driver from dell and i am still getting the (code 43) error.. I will try tru3blu3's walk through when I get home from work tonight.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.

 

hey i have the same card and problem its most likley a bad card like me

driver instalation problem - NVIDIA Forums

look at post 3 it tells you how to see if its a bad card and it sucks if you got it because dell has no clue if its hardware or software problem yet...

 

Latest Dell driver (1/11/12) has been removed from their website - i'm assuming it's a 295.xx though?

 

Hi gents,

Just thought I should post back here as I (unsuprisingly) had the same issue and just got it sorted.

It is *not* a hardware issue, how can it be - it is purely a software detection issue due to the Optimus "stuff" not presenting it correctly or the Dell drivers not having the correct identification codes in the driver.

anyway - I got mine delivered last night. Naturally it runs like a piece of crap because it has all of Dell's crap installed and the resolution/fonts never look quite right when Dell ship these things imo, so I always blat them and start fresh.

But before I blatted it I loaded on WoW/SWTOR and a couple of others just to see the perf. All runs perfectly.

Reinstall from scrach and all drivers load correctly apart from the Nvidia as the installer can't find compatible hardware. Tried a bunch of stuff:

1) the dell stock driver off download site
2) the dell beta driver off the download site
3) latest WHQL Nvidia driver off their site
4) latest beta Nvidia driver off their site

all say the same thing, no compatible hardware. So I head over to NVIDIA & Laptop News | Latest NVIDIA drivers and related news | laptopvideo2go.com (which is where I used to get my laptop drivers back before Nvidia started including mobile drivers in the main builds) and pull the latest beta driver (295.18) and modded inf.

Extract the driver, copy the inf over the stock one and then it magically recognises the hardware. I expect Dell did their age old trick of taking a stock GT555m and changing the IDs so it is a "M14x GT555m" - which means that nothing will pick the damn thing up now.

anyway - thats how you get back up and running chaps. If you don't want the latest beta I'm sure the latest WHQL driver will also work.

Have fun

p.s - Optimus works perfectly in case you were concerned.

 

I can confirm that the above works.

 

the version on dells site is 269.37

sorry if my fix seemed a little confusing, moogleassassin got it down pretty simple and easy.

oh, and i just got a call from a dell technician with my motherboard..., i swear it always works out like this.

 

I had a call from alienware tech today, said to update to new driver to see if it works.

Downloaded :NVIDIA_MULTI-DEVICE_A02_R316025
Installed first time, been playing bf3 for about an hour running a max 65 degs..

Have to call him back now to say that its fixed..

 

Hopefully they can start uploading higher level drivers for you guys, but for now, be happy haha

 

hey ben, have you updated to the latest bios yet? maybe try going back to a05 and then do an a08 after that? i was also getting the 43 with the old laptoptogo drivers forced installed

 

Solved!

Got my brand new m14x (with 3GB video memory), first thing i did was to format and reinstall everything... after that nvidia card didn't pick up.

Tried every posible BIOS, the same.

Called support and after they tried to install drivers for almost an hour they gave me a ticket number for a mobo replacement.

2-3 days later, the mobo came and before it was replaced I asked the tech to let me compare them. They're almost the same... the only difference was the nvidia chip revision. The bad one got a 2 in middle of model, and the new one didn't.

Now i have my m14x working as it should! Latest BIOS and latest nvidia drivers.

 

can you elaborate on this? I've wanted to update my driver for quite sometime now but all the uncertainty is holding me back.