Laptop GFX card disappeared

[the_sacrosanct]

Sys Specs:
Gigabyte P35 laptop
intel i7-4710HQ 2.50Ghz
8Gb DDR3L RAM
NVidia GTX 860M video card with Intel HD onboard
Windows 7 x64, SP1

Yesterday during a game of CS:GO my laptop froze and I had to reboot. Subsequently when I ran the game I noticed huge slowdown, and after a little investigation found that my Nvidia GFX card has disappeared from the system, leaving only the onboard Intel GFX. I've had a good look around in Device Manager including showing hidden items, but it's not being detected at all (and there are no unidentified components either). When I tried to reinstall Nvidia drivers the installer says it can't detect any compatible hardware.

Obviously my big fear (being about a year out of the 2 year warranty) is that the Nvidia hardware is utterly fried or has somehow disconnected, but traditionally being a desktop user I'm not confident popping a laptop open.

Last week I had some issues whereby some sound drivers installed (uninvited I might add) by NVidia were causing my default audio drivers to stop working, which I was only able to fix by uninstalling all of the audio drivers and letting Windows reinstall the defaults. My small glimmer of hope is that this points to some sort of fixable wider software issue?

I've yet to try simply reformatting because my Windows disk is quite a few miles away.

Any ideas/suggestions from the pros would be very gratefully received!

 

[Wayfall]

Well of course the first thing is to try and install/repair the devices driver.

You could try going back a few days with Windows Restore.

 

[the_sacrosanct]

Thanks for the ideas Wayfall, but I've already tried installing the drivers and the installation program tells me it can't find compatible hardware. AFAIK I can't repair drivers if the device isn't showing up in Device Manager, though do correct me if I'm wrong.

I tried a Sys Restore to no avail.

 

[Wayfall]

Ye the Graphics card may of popped. I would recommend you either send it in for repairs if its under warranty or walk/drive down to an independent pc/hardware store and ask for advice (which many are happy to give free of charge) and if they could take at look at your graphics card.