Why is my lap-top not using nvidia GPU?

Question

I have a HP Pavilion 17-f110nw laptop wich has a geforce GT 840M.

Lately i formatted the hard drive and installed a fresh win 10 installation on it ( v1709, disabled updates, cause i don't want them, could this be the case? ). I have installed the proper nvidia notebook drivers (notebook 419.67 for 64-bit windows 10) Theoretically everything should be working. I set "High-performance NVIDIA processor" as the prefered GPU, windows recognises the graphics card in device manager, i can see it in the "render" tab in dxdiag, i can see it in HWMonitor.

The problem is, despite all my effort to get all the settings right, the card is never ever used. Whatever i run, even if i select to run it with the card in context menu, does not actually use the graphics card, as it is indicated by performance (totally non existent, the computer barely stands TES:V menu, youtube in 4K, but back in the day it used to run Witcher 3 on medium ) and GPU load, wich i can monitor in HWMonitor(there is none).

I also tried OEM drivers from HP's website (https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-pavilion-17-f100-notebook-pc-series/7234909/model/7492694) and they provided the same effect.

Any help would be appreciated

EDIT: With a heavy heart i installed windows updates(the pc is really significantly slower now, did not expect that), and some HP drivers along with it, hoping that this might help, i will try a bunch of things now and see if the fact that windows is up to date is of any help. I will try installing chipset drivers wich are meant for v1803

Answer 1

I updated windows, installed chipset driver from HP's website (link in the question) and it still did not work, but, suprisingly, after i updated bios the GPU works very nicely! So, for anyone who gets into this position, here is my setup:

• Win10 v1803

• Latest NVIDIA drivers for my graphics card ( 419.67 notebook drivers, nothing special, just downloaded it from NVIDIA's website, not the HP support page )

• Intel Chipset Installation Utility and Driver ( just the chipset driver from the support page)

• Intel Graphics Driver for Win10 v1803

• BIOS update from HP's support page

Generally i just recommend updating both BIOS and Windows, then installing NVIDIA drivers, then chipset drivers and any drivers you want from your producer's support page. It may take a little fiddling at first to install nvidia driver, you may want to disable the microsoft display adapter, reboot, make sure fast startup is disabled, try to remove it in safe-mode etc. It also may take a long time for driver setups from nvidia to check system compatibility, prepare installation, you must be patient, it's not stuck ( probably).

If anybody gets this problem with this laptop or simillar and somehow ends up here, please try just updating bios and let others know in the comments if that works.

Answer 2

I ran into this problem, and the answer ended up being in the NVIDIA control panel. Open the NVIDIA Control Panel and go under "Manage 3D Settings". You can change it on the Global Settings page (as you've tried) or you can go to the "Program Settings" tab, where you can assign a default GPU to individual programs.

I opted to go with assigning it on a program-by-program basis to make sure the right apps were getting the GPU I wanted assigned.