I bought a refurbished Lenovo Legion 7i 16IRX9H from a reputable retailer about 14 months ago. It had been working normally, but after returning from a five-day trip, the laptop was stuck at 60 Hz instead of 240 Hz and Windows no longer recognized the RTX 4090 properly. Device Manager lists it only as a generic display adapter, and the NVIDIA software behaves as though no NVIDIA GPU is installed.
So far I have reset the embedded controller and NVRAM, loaded BIOS defaults, tested Hybrid and Discrete Graphics modes, removed drivers in Safe Mode with DDU, tried NVIDIA and Lenovo driver packages, updated and reflashed the BIOS, installed Windows 11 from fresh external media, and tested a live Ubuntu environment. Discrete-only mode causes Windows to boot-loop, so I have to use Hybrid mode. Linux can see the RTX 4090 on the PCIe bus, but the GPU fails during more advanced driver initialization.
Several Windows minidumps have shown errors involving hardware link drops, MMIO register failures, and repeated page-fault activity. Since a clean Windows installation and multiple driver versions made no difference, I am worried that the dGPU, its VRAM, motherboard connection, or power circuitry may have failed. Does this sound like a hardware fault, or are there any worthwhile software or firmware checks left before I pursue a repair?
3 Answers
At this stage, a board-level laptop repair specialist or Lenovo-authorized service center is probably the most useful next step. A reputable technician may be able to determine whether the fault is repairable before you commit to replacing the entire motherboard. Since you are in the UK, look for a specialist that explicitly handles gaming-laptop GPU and motherboard repairs rather than a general PC shop.
The combination of intermittent GPU recognition, failure during driver initialization, crashes involving MMIO and PCIe communication, and no improvement after a clean operating-system install strongly points to a failing dGPU or related motherboard circuitry. Since the GPU is visible on the PCIe bus but cannot complete initialization, the silicon itself is not necessarily the only suspect; VRAM, power delivery, or the board connection could also be involved.
You could try installing the driver manually through Device Manager by pointing it directly to the NVIDIA driver INF file. The regular installer may refuse to run when the GPU is being identified incorrectly, although this is unlikely to fix an actual hardware initialization failure.
I tried the normal NVIDIA downloads, but they come as executable installers and Device Manager did not automatically find a usable driver. I may still try extracting the package and selecting the INF manually.
That makes sense. I was initially looking at GPU repair specialists abroad, but I will search for a UK service that does board-level diagnostics and ask for an estimate before approving any work.