Did I Just Kill My GPU?

[Shads]

So, a few minutes ago I was on Rainbow Six Siege, and turned my graphics settings to very high, which didn't raise any red flags at first. Got into a match, lagging at 15-ish FPS, then my laptop shutdown and when I came back to turn the settings down and play normally, I was at 0-2 FPS. Couldn't even load in, so I tried updating my drivers through GeForce Experience and also from the NVIDIA website. I went to device manager, and it shows a little ! symbol. Going to it's properties and device status, I get "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)". I also only see one GPU under device manager, and can no longer open NVIDIA Control Panel.

 

Did I just kill my GPU? I don't think I did because I'm still writing this on my laptop, but I have no idea how to fix it. I've already tried disabling, updating drivers, and restarting. Here's my specs, if it helps:

Aorus X7 Pro
i7-4870HQ

GTX 970M x2 in SLI (3GB+3GB)
16GB DDR3-1366Mhz

250GB+250GB RAID 0 SSD
1TB 7200RPM HDD

[SlipperyPete]

3 minutes ago, Shads said:

I don't think I did because I'm still writing this on my laptop

this is not a clear indication one way or another

your laptop could be running off of the CPUs integrated graphics right now

[Shads]

1 minute ago, SlipperyPete said:

this is not a clear indication one way or another

your laptop could be running off of the CPUs integrated graphics right now

That's what I was thinking, but I wasn't 100% sure

[SlipperyPete]

1 minute ago, Shads said:

That's what I was thinking, but I wasn't 100% sure

i wish i had any ideas for you to test things, but im not a large laptop user outside of my school (non-gaming) laptop. if i had to give a suggestion try reinstalling windows after a backup of your files. maybe the drivers became corrupted or something

 

[Spotty]

8 minutes ago, Shads said:

So, a few minutes ago I was on Rainbow Six Siege, and turned my graphics settings to very high, which didn't raise any red flags at first. Got into a match, lagging at 15-ish FPS, then my laptop shutdown and when I came back to turn the settings down and play normally, I was at 0-2 FPS.

Did the laptop feel unusually hot before it shut down?  A slow down and then shut down is typical of a machine that is overheating, thermal throttling, and then shutting down to protect itself. However, assuming there's no other damage, it should return to normal once the machine has cooled down. Strange that the GPU is not showing in device manager.

 

8 minutes ago, Shads said:

That's what I was thinking, but I wasn't 100% sure

Right click the desktop and select Display Settings, then go in to "Advanced Display Settings". It will show some information about your monitor and what GPU device it is connected to.

[AskTJ]

If the machine thermal throttled, which it probably did, it would've shutdown to protect the components. If there is no physical damage, try using it again. 

[Shads]

27 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Did the laptop feel unusually hot before it shut down?  A slow down and then shut down is typical of a machine that is overheating, thermal throttling, and then shutting down to protect itself. However, assuming there's no other damage, it should return to normal once the machine has cooled down. Strange that the GPU is not showing in device manager.

 

Right click the desktop and select Display Settings, then go in to "Advanced Display Settings". It will show some information about your monitor and what GPU device it is connected to.

I ended up restoring from a point I set a few days ago, and it works, but I'm only seeing 1 970M instead of two in the device manager now. I would assume the shutdown was indeed due to thermal throttling, as it's happened before, and the fans were going at full blast. I can't see Advanced Display Settings though, I'm assuming that's not a thing in Windows 10?

[Spotty]

1 minute ago, Shads said:

I can't see Advanced Display Settings though, I'm assuming that's not a thing in Windows 10?

It's in Windows 10. Right click on desktop to open Display Settings, and scroll down a bit for the Advanced Display Settings option.

 

Then it will show your laptops monitor and will show Display 1: Connected to.....

 

This is really just so you can see whether it's running on integrated graphics or on your GPU(s).
Alternatively if you open Task Manager and check the Performance Tab, you can see whether or not your integrated graphics is being utilised or if your GPU is.

[Shads]

3 minutes ago, Spotty said:

 

I literally don't see that. I don't know why.

[Spotty]

3 minutes ago, Shads said:

I literally don't see that. I don't know why.

Hmm, not sure. Try searching for "View Advanced Display info" in the settings search box. Should still come up there if it's not listed in your display settings.

[Shads]

3 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Hmm, not sure. Try searching for "View Advanced Display info" in the settings search box. Should still come up there if it's not listed in your display settings.

No results for that either. I've noticed Windows 10 isn't entirely consistent from system to system.

[Spotty]

5 minutes ago, Shads said:

No results for that either. I've noticed Windows 10 isn't entirely consistent from system to system.

Strange. I'm running 1803 so if you're on 1709 it might not be present?
Anyway, it doesn't really matter as it won't help fix your issue.

Try running DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) to fully uninstall the display drivers and then try installing the latest display drivers from nvidia.

[Shads]

2 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Strange. I'm running 1803 so if you're on 1709 it might not be present?
Anyway, it doesn't really matter as it won't help fix your issue.

Try running DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) to fully uninstall the display drivers and then try installing the latest display drivers from nvidia.

Wagnardsoft?

[Spotty]

2 minutes ago, Shads said:

Wagnardsoft

Yeah that's it
Click the "Official Download" link.
https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1158

[Shads]

3 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Yeah that's it
Click the "Official Download" link.
https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1158

Alright. I'll try that. And I just checked, yeah I'm on 1709

[Shads]

So after several hours of software hell, I managed to fix my issue. 
I installed my drivers, restarted several times, then tired updating to 1803, but that made things worse, so after like `15 instances of creating restore points and going back to the previous version of Windows 10, I ended like this:

1. GPU issue is fixed. Thank god for that.
2. I'm staying on this version of Win10 for a while, since I get stuck in a login loop now without my GPU's being detected AT ALL. 

 

Thanks for all the help from everyone in this thread, it was a long arduous process but I'm all good now.

[Spotty]

5 hours ago, Shads said:

then tired updating to 1803, but that made things worse

Ah, welcome to the wonderful world of Windows 10.