Troubleshooting a Mystery: My Nvidia 3060 GPU Has Disappeared

As an IT professional, I pride myself on being able to tackle most technical issues that come my way. However, I recently encountered a perplexing problem that has left me scratching my head.

I purchased a used laptop equipped with an Nvidia 3060 graphics card from my company, and for the first two weeks, everything ran smoothly. Unfortunately, a couple of days ago, the GPU seemingly stopped functioning altogether.

In my quest to resolve the issue, I have explored a variety of troubleshooting methods. I started by reinstalling the graphics drivers, performing BIOS updates, and even reverting both BIOS and Windows updates to previous versions. I also tried uninstalling the drivers and rolling back to older versions, as well as reinstalling Windows entirely to see if that might help.

Interestingly, the device manager still recognizes the graphics card without issue, yet it remains unrecognized by any other applications or programs. This situation has left me at a standstill, and I am reaching out to the community for assistance.

If anyone has insights or experiences dealing with similar issues—or if you have suggestions on other troubleshooting steps I might not have considered—I would greatly appreciate your input. Let’s collaborate and find a solution to this mysterious GPU dilemma.