"Unable to initialize CUDA" or see NVIDIA GPU with GUI Miner

[Bleak Morn]

I have a NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M and I'm trying to use the GUI miner here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3878.0

In the devices list of the miner, the only options I see are my Intel i7-2630 processor - not the NVIDIA card.

So I tried to set up a new CUDA miner, but when I run the miner at the command line I get the following error:

rpcminer-cuda.exe
Client will start 1 miner threads
Work will be refreshed every 4000 ms
Unable to initialize CUDA

I looked up this error and found a suggestion to download the latest CUDA SDK - but that didn't seem to help.

I'd prefer to get the GUI miner to see that I have a GPU available for mining.

I had the CUDA miner working properly as of 8/28/2012 but I've been getting this Unable to initialize CUDA error ever since.

At this point I'd prefer to get the GUI miner working for simplicity's sake, but I'd settle for getting it to work via the command line - any help?

Update: Command line arguments I'm using are: rpcminer-cuda.exe -url=http://api.bitcoin.cz:8332 -user=username -password=password

The Username and Password aren't the problem because they work for CPU mining.

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[Schleicher]

Probably a driver issue. Try reinstalling it.

[Bleak Morn]

Probably a driver issue. Try reinstalling it.

Tried re-installing. Still getting the error. Didn't get any errors during re-install of latest drivers.

[Schleicher]

Open the Nvidia control panel
go to Help --> System Information
do you see your card there?
What driver version?

[Bleak Morn]

Open the Nvidia control panel
go to Help --> System Information
do you see your card there?
What driver version?

Yes, I see my card.

Driver version: 265.89

[crazyates]

Open the Nvidia control panel
go to Help --> System Information
do you see your card there?
What driver version?

Yes, I see my card.

Driver version: 265.89

Isnt the newest driver like 306.xx or something like that?

[Schleicher]

Depends. For XP it's something like 266.
265 should work for XP.

Oh, btw, don't forget to add -gpu=0 or something to the command line when you use rpcminer.

[Bleak Morn]

Open the Nvidia control panel
go to Help --> System Information
do you see your card there?
What driver version?

Yes, I see my card.

Driver version: 265.89

Isnt the newest driver like 306.xx or something like that?

Possibly. This is the latest from Toshiba. I find that the drivers from the hardware manufacturers can be more reliable (learned that lesson the hard way with Intel graphics drivers on a Dell).

Anyway, I tried the clean re-install option and it seems to be working now.

Thanks to all who took an interest in helping.

[noncecents]

Using a laptop to mine is a loss case anyway.

I recommend that you calculate your earnings before you go ahead.

Consider that you may increase the cost of your electricity bill with no visible gain. It will also put heavy wear on your laptop's GPU and other components nearby, which may fail much sooner than you anticipated.

[Eli0t]

i found rpcminer-cuda to be very unstable (crashes the display driver on ctrl+c and close box) and have less hashrate than Cudaminer https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167229.0