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Question

Laptop GPU issues, for the love of god please help

May 8, 2017 3:21PM PDT

ASUS Q550L, Nvidia GeForce 745m, Windows 8.1 64x

One day while playing games, my laptop completely cut off from the internet, and then about 30 seconds to a minute later, cut to a black screen while the sound was still on. I shut off the laptop, powered it back on and could only get a black screen; windows would not boot at all. I figured since the display crashed, I'd uninstall and reinstall the display drivers. Booted into safe mode, uninstalled the display drivers, and booted back into normal mode with success. The intel integrated driver installed perfectly, but the 745m driver came up with a little exclamation mark in device manager and an error: "Code 43". Now the GPU isn't working at all.

Things I've tried:
-Updating/Flashing BIOS.
-Trying about 8-10 different 745m drivers, most of which were provided by ASUS support staff.
-Preforming complete virus, malware, adware and spyware scans multiple times.
-Reinstalling other display drivers
-Installing a chipset update driver (NOTE: This never works because I get the same error: "File copying was unsuccessful. The setup will exit")
-Running an SFC scan and repairing the disc image.
-Completely removing the display drivers and driver files with DDU before installing.
-Refreshing the PC (Error pops up, I can't remember what it said but it has something to do with the hard drive)

Is the GPU just dead? It wasn't under heavy load when the issue happened (League of Legends, medium settings with the frame rate capped, not very intensive at all), all cooling fans were running and the laptop isn't very old. It doesn't have a history of anything intensive either.

I can't do a factory reset: most of the programs on this computer are not mine and the owner does not want to reset the computer. I've tried to convince her as this is the last thing I can think of to do, but with no luck.

Open to all suggestions, please help!

Discussion is locked

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Clarification Request
The refresh failure.
May 8, 2017 3:47PM PDT

Seen that. Either a failing HDD or it needs the old CHKDSK on all drives with the /F /R /X switches.

If the drive is fine, I move to a full Windows 10 reset.

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Refresh Failure
May 8, 2017 4:10PM PDT

I remember what the error was after looking around:
"The drive where windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again."

Not sure what that means though!

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Tell me what command you used.
May 8, 2017 4:29PM PDT

And if the command was elevated.

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PC Refresh
May 8, 2017 4:51PM PDT

Didn't use a command:
Shift-clicked restart to open up boot options (safe mode, refresh pc, reset pc etc). From there I clicked on "Refresh PC" and that text came up. "The drive where windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again."

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That's a sign CHKDSK needs to be run.
May 8, 2017 6:17PM PDT

Be sure to use an elevated prompt with the /F /R and /X switches on all drives.

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Remember I can't guess if folk tinkered with the file system
May 8, 2017 6:21PM PDT
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Worked sort of?
May 8, 2017 6:58PM PDT

After using chkdsk, the exclamation point and the error is gone from the device manager. Now the GPU doesn't want to work properly; League is locked at 60 (no cap on it in settings), and other games still seem like they are running on the integrated chip rather than the dedicated GPU.

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Worked for real this time
May 8, 2017 7:09PM PDT

Nevermind, changed some setting and everything is great now. Thank you!

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Post again if you have troubles.
May 8, 2017 8:53PM PDT

There are more arrows in the arsenal so top post and I'll go over the rest of the work. But for now, stop and use it along with backups so you don't have to burn it down.

Post was last edited on May 8, 2017 8:53 PM PDT

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Answer
I'd try a Linux distro.
May 8, 2017 3:38PM PDT

Post was last edited on May 8, 2017 3:46 PM PDT

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Linux Distro
May 8, 2017 4:07PM PDT

Thanks for the tip, I'll try that out!
And yeah, I've tried every step I could find for reinstalling drivers.

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If everything works OK on Linux...
May 8, 2017 4:10PM PDT

it's likely as Bob suggested a failing hard drive.
Dafydd.

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Linux
May 8, 2017 4:49PM PDT

I have a Linux distro on an usb, and can boot to it now. What exactly am I looking to do, and how would I be able to test the hard drive or GPU? I have little to no experience with any Linux distro.