I created a custom recovery disk for my Windows 7 Ultimate machine. I booted with it to make sure it was working and then exited. I didn't restore any data or anything like that, just poked around the screens of the Ghost recovery console. When I rebooted without the recovery disk, the computer is stuck in VGA mode and the display adapter is now set to vgasave. This machine has a 3rd generation Intel (Ivy Bridge) processor which has an embedded video adapter (Intel 4000) and a separate Nvidia graphics adapter (Dell E6430 quad-core). Also, when I rebooted the machine, it seemed to think that there were many hardware changes and automatically reinstalled several other device drivers.
I rebooted again and it recognized the Nvidia and installed the correct device driver, but the Intel 4000 was still not visible in device manager.
After contacting Dell support, it looks like the "Optimus" BIOS setting got turned off when I used the recovery disk . This setting allows two video adapters to work together. When the system senses the need for the nvidia for gaming, for example, it turns on the nvidia and uses it, otherwise, it uses the lower power consumption Intel 4000. To turn on Optimus, press F2 during boot process, navigate to video settings and turn on Optimus. After I did this, both the Intel and Nvidia cards appeared in device manager.
Can anyone explain why so many device drivers had to be reinstalled after using the recovery disk, is this normal?
I thought that maybe this was caused because the recovery disk doesn't have the correct video drivers installed, so I tried to get the 32-bit Intel 4000 driver, but the Ghost utility to make a custom disk does not allow it to be loaded. Is this because Ghost doesn't allow alternative video adapter drivers to be installed during a recovery?
I was able to load my other 32-bit drivers as needed onto the recovery disk without a problem. So I am wondering if Ghost needs a new release to handle the current crop of Intel processors.