Ookay, this is making me tear my damn hair out.
I've got an NVidia GeForce 8500 GT that has up until this point worked just fine. I had to run some windows setup bits and pieces, and dong so messed up my driver setup. 'No worries' I think and go to reinstall them.
I do so, and the driver has that nasty little yellow icon next to it in the device manager, displaying code 10 error. I update everything to the latest versions, and the icon remains.
Here's where it starts to get weird - if I disable and then enable the device in device manager, it starts to work properly. While I can't edit the resolution, dual monitor setup and so on via the Display settings area in the Control Panel, if I open the Nvidia software I can edit it just fine there. I can set up dual monitors, 3D rendering, the works.
However, it seems like to the rest of the computer the card doesn't exist. Games won't boot because it can't detect the card, and like I said I can't edit anything BUT my visual style from the display settings window.
I've tried disconnecting and reconnecting the card physically, and I've reinstalled, rolled back and generally messed with the drivers to no end. Lots of restarts, lots of trouble - same situation with each install, no matter how fresh it is.
Any ideas? I'm imagining this is a windows problem since within the nvidia software the card works fine.
Thanks a lot.