The NVIDIA Control Panel is a quiet yet powerful tool that comes with your NVIDIA graphics card. It is a great tool when customizing your gaming experience, offering a number of graphics settings and customization options.
However, you may occasionally run into a “NVIDIA display settings are not available” error message when trying to use it. When this happens, your PC is suffering from one of several problems with your NVIDIA graphics card. Luckily, this article highlights some proven methods to get your NVIDIA Control Panel app working again.
What is NVIDIA Control Panel?
NVIDIA Control Panel is a utility software used to access important features of NVIDIA graphics cards. It provides a number of sliders, checkboxes and dropdowns that allow you to configure the rendering of any 3D application compatible with your graphics card.
The software functions very similar to NVIDIA GeForce Experience, allowing you to customize graphics settings. In fact, most gamers prefer to use the lightweight GeForce Experience. However, Control Panel is a more powerful option with more advanced features.
Experienced gamers and people working with 3D applications such as Houdini or Autodesk Maya use the NVIDIA Control Panel the most. This allows them to customize every single aspect of rendering, including VSync, antialiasing, texture sampling, retracing, and other configurations.
In addition to rendering, the NVIDIA Control Panel allows you to customize the behavior of the NVIDIA PhysX physics engine. This feature allows you to achieve the perfect balance between accuracy and optimal performance of physics simulations on your Windows PC.
6 Ways to Fix NVIDIA Control Panel
The benefits of using the NVIDIA Control Panel to improve your gaming experience cannot be overstated. To that end, here are six ways to fix the “NVIDIA display settings are not available” or any other issue you may have with this software.
1. Check Display Connections
Your PC usually has two types of display ports; Intel integrated graphics and NVIDIA graphics hardware. If your monitor is connected to the wrong display port, the NVIDIA Control Panel will fail to detect the graphics card.
Before trying software solutions, you must first identify the display port and connect your monitor’s display adapter to the NVIDIA graphics hardware (discrete) port. After fixing the connection restart your computer and check to see that it works.
2. Use a VGA to HDMI converter on your graphics card
If the problem persists even after connecting your display cable to the appropriate slot, you can try using a converter or replacing the display adapter. One of the more popular converters is the VGA to HDMI, which allows you to use one of the HDMI ports on your computer.
3. Update/Reinstall Graphics Card Drivers
Various factors can cause your graphics card drivers to stop working, preventing Windows from detecting the graphics card hardware. Drivers may be out of date, corrupt or uninstalled. In addition, third-party programs and Windows Updates can also affect your drivers.
There are several ways to update your graphics card driver. However, the easiest way is to use the GeForce Experience app. You can also visit NVIDIA’s official drivers web page, but this method may require you to manually locate your graphics card driver.
To update your drivers, open GeForce Experience and switch to the Drivers menu. Click the Check for Updates button to get the latest drivers for your graphics card. After checking for updates, download the latest driver and follow the instructions to install it on your PC.
If you have the latest drivers for your graphics card, the GeForce Experience app gives you the option to reinstall the driver and fix any problems with the current installation.
4. Enable all NVIDIA services
NVIDIA has a number of services running on your computer that manage your display driver and ensure its smooth operation. They serve as an intermediary between your graphics card hardware and the Windows operating system.
If one or more of them stop working, your PC, and by extension, the NVIDIA Control Panel, will not detect the graphics card. To fix this issue, you need to enable or restart all NVIDIA services.
To enable these services, press Win+R to open the Run program, then type services.msc in the Search bar and press Enter. Find any of the previously mentioned services, right-click and select Properties.