Troubleshooting a Mysterious GPU Issue in a Used Laptop

As an IT professional, encountering unexpected technical challenges can be frustrating, and that’s exactly the situation I’m in with a recently purchased used laptop. This device, equipped with an Nvidia GeForce 3060 GPU, seemed to be operating perfectly for a couple of weeks, but then it suddenly stopped functioning correctly.

In my quest to resolve this issue, I’ve taken a variety of steps to troubleshoot the problem—but so far, nothing has worked. Here’s a brief overview of what I’ve attempted:

1. Driver Reinstallation: I started by reinstalling the GPU drivers, ensuring that I had the latest versions downloaded from the official Nvidia website.
2. BIOS Updates: I explored updates for the BIOS to rule out any incompatibility issues.
3. System Reversions: I reverted the BIOS and Windows updates, hoping that a recent change was the culprit.
4. Driver Rollbacks: In addition to reinstalling drivers, I tried rolling back to older versions to see if that restored functionality.
5. Complete Windows Reinstallation: After exhausting all other options, I even performed a clean installation of Windows and then tried rolling back to an earlier version.

Despite all these efforts, the GPU appears correctly in the Device Manager, yet it remains unrecognized by any other software applications. It’s a perplexing situation that has left me at a standstill.

Does anyone in the community have advice or potential solutions for this issue? I’d greatly appreciate any insights or experiences you could share. Thank you!