Problems regarding graphics card.

Alright guys Earlier today my webcam failed, I spent about 3 hours trying to fix it, installing drivers, disabling, uninstalling, the whole lot, nothing worked AT ALL, and so, I decided, well, my laptop was full of crap anyway and decided to restore with windows7, and now I'm having more problems..

I am unable to get my laptop back to the correct 1920 x 1080 resolution and I believe this is so because of outdated graphics card, Now, to make matters worse, when I go to device manager, It wont even tell me the name of my graphics card let alone allow me to update or install the driver.

Ever since my restore I've had nothing but problems, I've been unable to do anything that requires anything slighty graphical, and well, I'd like to get this fixed, I know you guys are the place to go to for this kind of thing and so, I was wondering if you guys could help me out here..

 

Sounds like you reinstalled with windows 7 - does that mean you didn't use the original factory disks or recovery disks from respawn. If you just used win 7 I would try installing the drivers from the disc or from the website. Then either run a benchmark or download an nvidia or AMD diagnostic tool to check the cards.

 

If all you have done is reinstall the operating system, as Virtua pointed out, you will need to re-install all the relevant drivers for your system. By the sounds of it, you are running on Standard VGA drivers (check device manager and you will probably see "display" listed as such) so you need to re-install video drivers to get back to the proper resolution - along with all the other drivers for your system to get back to full functionality.

I would suggest you take a look at the following thread as it sounds like all you have right now is a fairly barebone OS system without any of the drivers your machine requires.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...r-install-order-guide-alienware-systems.html#

Alternatively, if you created recovery media using AlienRespawn (or Dell DataSafe) then you could boot from that media (by inserting your recovery media, rebooting, hitting F12 when you see the large AlienFace and selecting either "boot from usb" or "boot from CD/DVD/Optical" - depending on if you created disks or a USB - followed by enter) to get back to your original factory state when you first turned on your machine.

 

Alright, I (stupidly) never created a back up to restore to, but will definately do when I get this working, my issue is that even when I go to the dell website to download the correct video driver, when I try to install the driver I get an error on the driver installation telling me that it is incompatible and that ''the graphics driver could not find compatible hardware, I will check out the page and hope that I can find the correct driver that will somehow be compatible with a seemingly hidden card >_> Thanks guys, any more help is greatly appreciated.

 

Ok, so I followed the instructions on installing the IntelHD Driver before installing the NVidia driver, and when I went to install the IntelHD Driver, I was told my computer didn't reach minimum requirements.. any help guys? This is beginning to bug me with being unable to install any drivers.

 

You need to install the iGFX driver whilst in iGFX mode....if you are trying to install it whilst you are not in discrete mode, your system cannot "see" the iGFX - basically, press Fn & F7 to initiate a switch of graphics to integrated and install the HD3000 & reboot....then switch back (FN & F7 again) to your discrete/Nvidia gpu/s and install the Nvidia driver and that should work....

 

Got it sorted, try not to laugh, I spent so long trying to install the wrong driver for my laptop, downloaded the correct one and installed with no problems, thanks for the help guys!

 

Easily done! - main thing is you got it sorted now......

 

Trust me... you're not the first person that has done that. I would be lying to say that I never once made that mistake before. I have actually downloaded an AMD desktop driver by mistake more than once and it took longer than I am proud to admit before I realized why it would not install for me.