[SOLVED] Dell XPS 17 9700 Video Card Dropping Out

[SkyDenAZ]

Good morning and happy new year. I recently purchased the above mentioned computer and have been using it very lightly, mostly for a few old steam games and the occasional WoW session. Here are the specs.
Intel i7-10875H @2.3 ghz
16g RAM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with Max-Q Design
500g SSD

So here is the issue. When using the laptop, it has now on two occasions dropped out of the program I was in, the fans turn off, a popup from the program saying my hardware has changed, a restart and then NVIDIA popping up telling me that "An NVIDIA graphics card was not detected in your system". When I go to the device manager, under display adapters, all it has in there is my Intel UHD Graphics, when normally it also shows the NVIDIA one as well.

I am currently setup using the laptop as the base and it is connected to a 165hz LG 32" display through the USB-C into a Display port. This card should be able to handle just about anything and I am using it only to occasionally play WoW at moderate settings, certainly nothing that should be taxing it. In addition, the laptop never "feels" hot so I am confident the cooling is working.

The first time this happened Dell just sent out a brand new card and within two days it happened again. The second time, we managed to get the card to show up again after doing a F12 reboot and running a diagnostic. Nothing showed up as wrong, but when we booted in normally it re-appeared. So my question is, has anyone heard of this behavior before and am I hooking up the monitor (plus the settings required for such a hookup) correctly?

I will be honest this is all new to me, so be gentle, lol. Thank you in advance.

 

[Lutfij]

Happy new Year + Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

The first thing I'd do is cross-reference Dell's support site(conforming to your laptop's service tag or serial number) and see if you have any BIOS updates pending. If you do, gradually work your way from what you're currently on to the latest version while keeping in mind if you have to perform any MEI updates along the way.

Following that, you will want to make sure your OS is on the latest version. We're currently on version 20H2 for Windows 10. Might also be a good idea to keep an installer for the OS handy, using Windows Media Creation Tools and a pen drive. Then make sure your chipset and GPU drivers are all up to date.

Source the latest drivers from Nvidia's support site, then you can use DDU to uninstall the GPU drivers, then reinstall said drivers with the latest version in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

 

[SkyDenAZ]

Happy new Year + Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

The first thing I'd do is cross-reference Dell's support site(conforming to your laptop's service tag or serial number) and see if you have any BIOS updates pending. If you do, gradually work your way from what you're currently on to the latest version while keeping in mind if you have to perform any MEI updates along the way.

Following that, you will want to make sure your OS is on the latest version. We're currently on version 20H2 for Windows 10. Might also be a good idea to keep an installer for the OS handy, using Windows Media Creation Tools and a pen drive. Then make sure your chipset and GPU drivers are all up to date.

Source the latest drivers from Nvidia's support site, then you can use DDU to uninstall the GPU drivers, then reinstall said drivers with the latest version in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

Thank you for all that information. I have done all of that and I appear to be up to date. In addition, Dell has also logged into the laptop remotely and verified that everything is current on their end as well. We have run several diagnostic tests on the hardware and no issues have been found. It is a puzzling issue to be sure.

I am not sure if it has something to do with the setup I am using for the additional monitor or something more nefarious in the hardware of the laptop itself.