[SOLVED] GPU fans spinning but not detected

[wildchaox]

My specs are:
CPU: Intel i5-4690
Motherboard: ASUS H81M-A
RAM: 2x4 gb ddr3
GPU: Zotac GTX 1060 3gb
PSU: Cooler Master Masterwatt 550

Yesterday, my computer unexpectedly shutdown with my cpu fan blasting at full speed for no reason and when i restarted my pc, there was no display (was connected to my gpu) but when i connected to my mobo, there was display. When i checked the device manager i couldnt see my GPU being detected (fans were spinning though). I tried alot of solutions (resitting my gpu, ram, full uninstall of gpu drivers) and right now the problem i face is when i try to install nvidia drivers, it says it is not compatible with my version of windows even though I had the correct version downloaded and updated windows alr. I am not sure what is the problem here is it my motherboard or my gpu?

 

[Karadjgne]

Have you tried the auto install? Instead of manual download, let nvidia do the upgrade. Windows could have updated without your knowledge, making the drivers copy you have, obsolete (to nvidia)

 

[wildchaox]

Have you tried the auto install? Instead of manual download, let nvidia do the upgrade. Windows could have updated without your knowledge, making the drivers copy you have, obsolete (to nvidia)

What do u mean by auto install? If you are referring to the geforce experience , initially i could see my gpu in device manager when i show hidden devices then I did try to use GeForce experience to install the latest driver but it came out the same error msg (not compatible with this version of windows) so i tried using DDU to fully uninstall everything. When i tried to download Geforce experience again it wouldnt let me cause they couldnt detect a nvidia gpu :\

 

[Karadjgne]

Win10 has a native nvidia presence, that allows the monitors to work on something other than VGA. Wondering if it's corrupted or conflicting with the gpu driver download. Running through geforce experience did you use custom? Or express, always use Custom and enable clean install. Express doesn't overwrite anything, it just checks versions and if they match, skips that part. It'll only change different versions, often just adding the game optimizations. Anything corrupted doesn't get fixed. Custom starts from scratch, overwrites and resets everything.

Gpu shouldn't be a hidden device. Could try powering down, remove gpu entirely, clear cmos, power up, let the pc at least go through the post process, if you have igpu then use that and power windows fully. Then hard shutdown (pull the plug) and replace the gpu. On bootup, bios will be forced to do a full hardware check and should recognise the gpu. If it doesn't, reboot to command prompt and run DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
That'll run through (takes a minute) everything and if there's anything that differs from what Microsoft says windows should be, fixes it. SFC /SCANNOW is also decent, but only does protected system files and I'm not sure the nvidia stuff fully falls into that catagory.

 

[wildchaox]

Hi, i really appreciate your help!
however i tried your suggestion but my gpu still didn't show up in my devmgr (even in hidden devices)
do you think my gpu is faulty or is it my mobo that is the problem?

 

[Karadjgne]

That's really hard to say, since there's nothing to weigh it against. If you had access to another gpu and tried that and it didn't show up, then easy to point fingers at the motherboard. If it did show up, obvious conclusion is your gpu. If your board had a second pcie I'd say try that, unfortunately it doesn't, the gpu goes through a chipset for pcie there, not the cpu directly. A work-around of sorts.

With the sudden shutdown, cpu fan at full blast, almost sounds like the cooler failed and you suffered cpu thermal shutdown, which can corrupt anything from just data, to actual physical damage on a hdd, if you have a hdd, I'd run CHKDSK just to make sure that hasn't happened and is corrupting windows.

Without testing, can't say one way or the other, could be any of the 3, cpu, gpu, motherboard.

 

[wildchaox]

I see... thanks for your insight! I will get my pc checked soon and try to figure out whats wrong

 

[Karadjgne]

Sorry couldn't do more...