960m - problems with drivers

[PetarV]

I've had this problem for almost a year and I thought that after a few driver updates Nvdia will fix this, but they didn't. Whenever I update my drivers through Geforce Experience and after I restart my computer and I run something with my 960m, for example a game, the game crashes and a message pops up saying "960m is not removable and cannot be ejected"(or something like that I can't remember) and after that my computer can't even detect my nvidia GPU, games start on my intel hd! If I restart my computer again the same thing happens. After that I usually roll back to my previous driver and use it normally. Until recently from time to time, when I run games random dots appear on my screen and after that the game crashes and a message pops up saying "drivers stopped working and have recovered" and I have to restart my game to play it normally. I can't even run shadow of mordor cuz the game keeps crashing like that! I'm on the drivers from february this year and any newer version of the drivers doesn't work for me.
Im on win 7, the laptop is Asus GL551JW. By the way this isn't a huge problem because I'll be gaming on this GPU only for a few more months, I'll be getting a 1070 or 1070 ti for an eGPU set up soon and if it turns out the problem is in the 960m itself its no big deal since I won't use it anymore.

 

[hang-the-9]

It's probably the card failing. If you had the issue for a year why are you even trying to fix it now months away from replacing the system? Are you sure you can use an external video card with your system? You realize you will have a cable sticking out of your case, with a power supply for the video card on your desk and need to be attached to a monitor right? As well as being limited to PCIe 1X speeds with will bottleneck a 1070 pretty badly.

The new docks for video cards use USB C which your laptop does not have, and they also do not work with every laptop model that has USB C anyway.

You can try doing a system restore to default OEM image, that will revert the drivers to how they were new. Just need to backup your files first as it will wipe the system and set it up like new. Do not run driver updates from nVidia directly, use the drivers from ASUS even if they are older. Laptop video cards are only supported by the laptop vendor to maintain proper function.

 

[Wolfshadw]

Did that system come with Windows 7 or did you downgrade from Windows 8.1/10?

-Wolf sends

 

[Solandri]

I've had this problem for almost a year and I thought that after a few driver updates Nvdia will fix this, but they didn't. Whenever I update my drivers through Geforce Experience and after I restart my computer and I run something with my 960m, for example a game, the game crashes and a message pops up saying "960m is not removable and cannot be ejected"(or something like that I can't remember) and after that my computer can't even detect my nvidia GPU, games start on my intel hd!

The 960m is a laptop GPU. So you probably have a laptop with Nvidia Optimus selectable graphics (you can pick whether a program uses the Nvidia or Intel GPU). On Optimus laptops, the Intel GPU is always on and always driving the screen (and usually the HDMI output). The Nvidia GPU shows up as a coprocessor. If you assign a game to use the Nvidia GPU, it uses the Nvidia GPU to render a frame. When the frame is completed, the Optimus driver transfers it to the Intel GPU, which displays it on the screen.

As you can imagine, this process is completely dependent on the Optimus drivers. The regular Nvidia and Intel drivers are not set up for this. Consequently, Optimus laptops cannot upgrade their video drivers via GeForce Experience, or by directly downloading Nvidia drivers, or even Windows Update. You have to download the Nvidia and Intel GPU drivers from your laptop vendor's website, and use those.

In my case, my laptop vendor has not coded the latest drivers as being Windows 10 drivers (laptop shipped with Windows 8). Consequently, Windows 10 automatically replaces them with (non-functional) newer drivers every time it updates. And I get the same error you do when I try to play a game. I have to let Win10 update, then disable the update service, then manually reinstall the vendor's Nvidia and Intel drivers to get Optimus working again. The moment I re-enable the update service, Windows 10 immediately updates the Intel and Nvidia drivers to non-functional versions.

 

[PetarV]

Yes I'm sure it can work with my system, and I'm not going to use an USB C adapter. The one I'm going to use is a PCIe mini adapter on which the bottleneck is 15-20%.
The laptop came with win7, I bought it a few years ago.
I'll try to use the drivers from Asus' site, I've always used geforce experience before.