What to do if the laptop does not see the video card

Video cards in lap­tops are inte­grat­ed and dis­crete. The for­mer are built direct­ly into the proces­sor and are need­ed to ensure “min­i­mal life”. You won’t be able to play on them — well, except for some­thing very old and not too demand­ing on resources.

Much more inter­est­ing are dis­crete graph­ics cards in lap­tops. They are a sep­a­rate chip on the moth­er­board, which is need­ed to process “heavy” graph­ics. On lap­tops with dis­crete graph­ics accel­er­a­tors, you can play, and work in Auto­CAD with 3D, and do oth­er visu­al­iza­tion.

How­ev­er, there are sit­u­a­tions when the lap­top does not “see” one of the video cards. This does not always indi­cate a break­down of the device; in some cas­es, you can get by with inde­pen­dent manip­u­la­tions. The pro­ce­dure is as fol­lows:

1. Rein­stall the dri­vers by remov­ing the old ones and installing the new ones;

2. Rein­stall Win­dows.

How­ev­er, each of these actions has cer­tain nuances.

How to uninstall old video card drivers

Very often, the lap­top does not “see” the video card, because the dri­vers for it do not work cor­rect­ly. So the solu­tion is to rein­stall them. But first you need to remove the old ones.

Instruc­tion:

1. Open “My Com­put­er” (or “This PC” depend­ing on the oper­at­ing sys­tem you are using) and right-click any­where;

2. Select “Prop­er­ties” in the con­text menu that appears;

3. In the pan­el on the left, click on the link “Device Man­ag­er”;

4. In the Device Man­ag­er win­dow that opens, open the Dis­play adapters item. You will see your video cards;

5. Dou­ble left click on one of them. The prop­er­ties win­dow will open. In it, go to the “Dri­ver” tab;

6. At the bot­tom there will be a “Delete” but­ton. Click on it. Click on “OK” in the warn­ing that after that the device may not work or work incor­rect­ly;

7. Repeat steps 5–6 for the sec­ond video adapter;

8. Restart your com­put­er.

After that, it will go into the “min­i­mum vital activ­i­ty” mode. The image on the screen may be too large or too small. Be patient a lit­tle.

How to install video card drivers on a laptop

Now con­nect to the inter­net and open a brows­er. Go to your lap­top man­u­fac­tur­er’s web­site and look for sup­port or down­loads there.

Bet­ter yet, just google for “dri­ver lap­top man­u­fac­tur­er”. Replace “laptop_manufacturer” with your brand. For exam­ple, for HP lap­tops, the query will sound like “HP dri­vers”. Most like­ly, the first option offered by Google will lead you to the man­u­fac­tur­er’s web­site.

Instruc­tion:

1. Open the down­load sec­tion of the mobile com­put­er man­u­fac­tur­er’s web­site;

2. Spec­i­fy your mod­el (its name can be found on the box or a stick­er on the bot­tom of the lap­top case). Also, if nec­es­sary, indi­cate the oper­at­ing sys­tem used and the pre­ferred lan­guage;

3. In the pro­posed list of soft­ware, select the sec­tion “Video”, “Video cards”, Dis­play or some­thing like that;

4. Down­load the lat­est ver­sions of appli­ca­tions for inte­grat­ed and dis­crete graph­ics cards;

5. Install the inte­grat­ed video adapter soft­ware first (most like­ly it will be some kind of Intel HD Graph­ics), and then the dis­crete one, reboot­ing after each instal­la­tion.

What should I do if the laptop manufacturer does not have video card drivers on the site?

If the lap­top man­u­fac­tur­er does not offer com­pat­i­ble soft­ware, or if you have an oper­at­ing sys­tem dif­fer­ent from the pro­posed one, then you can try using Dri­ver­Pack. This pro­gram will auto­mat­i­cal­ly find the nec­es­sary dri­vers and install them.

Instruc­tion:

1. Con­nect to the Inter­net and run Dri­ver­Pack;

2. Wait while the pro­gram col­lects data about installed and avail­able pro­grams;

3. Enable — on new ver­sions of Dri­ver­Pack — the so-called “Expert Mode”. The switch is some­where at the bot­tom of the screen;

4. When a list of dri­vers appears, select only those offered for video adapters;

5. Install them and restart your com­put­er.

If this does not help, then there is only one thing left — to rein­stall Win­dows.

Features of reinstalling Windows on a laptop

It makes no sense to write a long instruc­tion on rein­stalling Win­dows. This is done quite eas­i­ly. How­ev­er, if you need to restore the oper­a­tion of video cards on a lap­top, it is worth con­sid­er­ing a few sub­tleties.

1. When installing dri­vers, first install the one intend­ed for the inte­grat­ed video adapter (most like­ly, this is some kind of Intel HD Graph­ics), then for the dis­crete one;

2. If you are installing Win­dows 10, then imme­di­ate­ly after launch, sim­ply run the built-in update tool (Set­tings — Update and Secu­ri­ty — Check for Updates) and do not touch any­thing. Win­dows 10 will install every­thing you need and even in the cor­rect order;

3. If you have a dis­crete AMD graph­ics accel­er­a­tor installed in your lap­top, then the instal­la­tion order is as fol­lows — first for the inte­grat­ed one, then for the dis­crete one, and final­ly for every­thing else. Oth­er­wise, periph­er­al devices such as Blue­tooth or USB 3.0 ports may not work. Reboot after each instal­la­tion.

And most impor­tant­ly — back up all impor­tant data before rein­stalling.

What to do if everything has been tried, but the laptop still does not “see” the video card?

And now the bad news. Most like­ly, this indi­cates a break­down of the graph­ic. And this means that you have a direct path to the ser­vice cen­ter.

At the same time, it is advis­able to think — is it worth it to car­ry a lap­top for repair at all? The fact is that dam­age to dis­crete video adapters is a seri­ous prob­lem, and seri­ous solu­tions are also required. In the best case, you will need to reball (sol­der) the graph­ics chip, which, depend­ing on the region and mod­el of the mobile com­put­er, will cost 40–100 $.

At worst, you will need to install a new graph­ics accel­er­a­tor. Added to the cost of the reball is the price of the chip, which — even if you man­age to find the right one for your mod­el — will cost at least a lot.

Thus, if you car­ry a lap­top to a ser­vice cen­ter, be pre­pared to give a con­sid­er­able amount of mon­ey, which in some cas­es is com­pa­ra­ble to the cost of a new lap­top.