Windows 7 Launch startup repair issue

[G-Stress]

Ok guys I'm at my wits end on this! I've googled and googled and can't find anyone having the same issue as me. I have an ASUS laptop model UL80J and recently wiped and re-installed win7 pro 64-bit. My issue is it finds 2 different video cards or dirver's. One is Intel HD Graphics Driver and the other is NVIDIA GeForce 310m I believe. I don't know why it does it never did this before.

What happens is everytime I reboot it starts to boot, then reboots and asks to launch startup repair or normally. The only way I can then get it to boot back is if I launch startup repair and let it do it's magic and it finally boots back. I've known this whole time it was an issue due to the video card, but cannot find a fix for nothing. I finally tried disabling each video card one at a time and rebooting and if I disabled the NVIDIA card it boots fine until I went to install service pack 1. It does the same thing the launching startup repair I guess removes SP1 and it boots back up.

So now because I haven't read a post that someone is having the same issue as me I'm overly frustrated with this. I thought about installing win8, but I really don't want to do that. Any tips, pointers or advice is greatly appreciated. This laptop is for the car mainly for the kids to watch their movies, etc. so I'm not afraid to try anything on it.

Thanks in advance.

[cooper]

I finally tried disabling each video card one at a time and rebooting and if I disabled the NVIDIA card it boots fine until I went to install service pack 1. It does the same thing the launching startup repair I guess removes SP1 and it boots back up.

Did you disable the driver or did you disable the device from within the BIOS?

[G-Stress]

Thanks for the quick and prompt reply Cooper. I disabled the device I guess via device manager. I tried disabling both and uninstalling both. I don't understand why it see's 2 different video cards being it's a laptop completely stock. All I did was a wipe and re-install. Just tried again this time disabling the intel HD graphics driver and uninstalling it and then updated SP1 and it did the same thing. Reboot then configure the SP then reboot and reboot again asking to boot normal mode or launch startup repair.

[cooper]

Well, the point is that it sees 2 video cards because it _has_ 2 video cards. Did you install the drivers from the nvidia/intel website or did you install the vid driver from ASUS support?

If you look at the relevant asus support page, select Win 7 64-bit and then see the vga drivers you'll find the last supported drivers for each vid card. If you then go down to the 'utilities' section, there's a few interesting bits like 'Power4Gear Hybrid Utility', 'ASUS Splendid Video Enhancement Technology' and 'ASUS Configuration Utility' each of which can be responsible for activating the appropriate vid card at startup and keeping the other dormant until needed.

I've never had multi-vid laptops myself. I did have a desktop once with both built-in and discrete video where I had to deactivate the built-in one via bios to get any semblance of reliable workings.

My guess is that in your case the laptop has the nVidia card as back-up for when the built-in can't muster it but tries to keep it shut down to save on battery power. Maybe that functioning requires a special driver to appropriately (de-)activate each vid card and since that utility isn't present or functioning properly one of the cards keeps complaining after reboot that it wasn't properly shut down.

[G-Stress]

Hmmm, Thanks Cooper. I wonder why they would build a laptop with 2 video cards though? I've heard about sLi and all that, but I am not really knowledgeable about it nor am I a gamer. I believe I used DriverBackup to backup the driver's then I wiped the laptop and just restored the driver's that way. I didn't even think to look in the bios and I am curious for what reason would a laptop need to shut down this video card or switch between the 2?

Thanks for the info.