Dead GFX card?

[Savern]

Hi guys,
I purchased a laptop 2.5 years ago from PCS and it had been working fine till awhile ago.

Specs are: Chassis & Display
17 INCH WIDESCREEN DISPLAY (1440 X 900)

Features
1 x Express Card Slot & 1 x Kensington Lock Port

Processor (CPU)
INTEL® Core 2 Duo T8100 (2 X 2.10GHz) 800MHz FSB/3MB L2 Cache

Memory (RAM)
2GB CORSAIR DDR2 667MHz - LIFETIME WARRANTY! (2x1GB)

Graphics Card
512MB GEFORCE 8600GS + D-SUB + TV-OUT

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
250GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (5,400rpm)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)

Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 3 IN 1 MEMORY CARD READER (SD, MMC, MS, MS PRO)

Sound Card
Realtek ALC268 2 Channel High Definition Audio + S/PDIF OUT

Network Facilities
Onboard 10/100 LAN & WIRELESS 802.11G NETWORK CARD

Basically about a month ago, while loading up a game of Starcraft 2, my laptop hung and failed to reboot. This was with Vista installed. Windows kept failing to initialise properly and so I tried safe mode. This worked and I attempted a system restore to a previous windows update. This then meant it wouldn't boot in safe mode.

Basically I panicked slightly, tried repairing vista which didnt work. My friend suggested installing windows 7, which I did. My laptop booted succesfully and everything worked as normal... except my gfx card. Basically windows doesn't want to accept that I have a Geforce 8600 installed. It just has the "Standard VGA adapter" in the control panel. I've tried downloading drivers but the nvidia installers all say "No compatible hardware recognised".

I've been in contact with pc specialist, who suggest it is a driver problem, as otherwise I shouldn't be able to see a screen at all. I don't quite know how to get windows/nvidia to recognise theres actually a card plugged in. Or is the card fried and I'm running off my 14mb onboard gfx?

looking for some advice/help before I splash out on a replacement.

Cheers

[PCS]

Have you tried installing the graphics from the driver CD that was provided with the system originally?

[iiMKUltra]

Sorry for the bump, but I have the same problem and the same card. When I installed the drivers from the Nvidia site and rebooted Windows, it wouldn't start, so I restored Windows after phoning the Technical Support line, and then tried the drivers on the disc (this is on Windows 7 Home Premium 64, the disc came with Vista Ultimate 64). I rebooted Windows, and it once again wouldn't start and I had to perform a restore. I then phoned again and was directed to mitacservice.com, which isn't working. Any suggestions from anyone?

[PCS]

If the computer won't work when the graphics drivers are installed, and based on your original description of how the problem occurred, it looks like your graphics card may have failed. Only thing to try is re-installing Vista because it could just be that the graphics card is not supported in Windows 7. Try this and let us know how you get on.

[Savern]

Hi,
Now I'm back home for a bit I found the original driver disk. Installed the drivers on Windows 7, which caused windows to fail to load. Have since formatted and reinstalled Vista, upon installing GFX drivers it then failed to load. So dead card yes?

[Sleinous]

You can not use the Nvidia drivers as they usually do not have the mainboard manufacturer in their INF file, meaning you either NEED to stick to the driver on the original disc you received OR downloaded a modded INF to get it to work. (Basically adds your chipset to the INF list allowing you to install).

The only reason many laptop manufacturers like Sony arent on the INF list is because they chose to release the drivers through their own website for the laptops instead of with Nvidia. That would be all well and good IF they bothered to update the darn things at all.