I've been using the same laptop - an HP Envy 17-3270nr - for like three years now. It use AMD GPU switching graphics, with Intel HD 4000 and AMD Radeon HD 7850M. I originally got it with Windows 7 x64 Home Premium, but updated to Windows 8 when it came out. I then switched back to Windows 7 x64 Home Premium. Since then I haven't been able to get the HD 7850M to work ever. Normally that wasn't much of an issue because I have a gaming PC at home, but I'm traveling abroad right now and would love to be able to play games at more than 20fps. Unfortunately, getting the Radeon to work is proving a lot more difficult than I'd hoped.

To start off, I did a clean uninstall of AMD drivers and software by going to the Programs and Features list, selecting the AMD Catalyst Install Manager, and telling it to uninstall. I then downloaded the latest AMD catalyst package from the AMD website and ran its express installation. It appeared to install just fine, but when I rebooted I got the error message:

No AMD graphics driver is installed, or the AMD driver is not functioning properly. Please install the AMD driver appropriate for your AMD hardware.

I right-clicked my desktop and clicked the Catalyst Control Center and got the error message:

AMD Catalyst Control Center cannot be started. There are currently no settings that can be configured using AMD Catalyst Control Center.

In my device manager, I currently have two display adapters installed:

AMD Radeon HD 7800M Series

and

Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000

and both of them have little yellow exclamation points next to them. Neither GPU driver seems to be in use - Aero was automatically disabled on reboot too.

It might be a bit of a long shot, but does anyone have any experience with AMD mobile switchable graphics? I would really like to get this laptop working 100%. I also tried using the package provided by HP (and last updated in March of 2012) but it didn't work either. Any help or suggestions at all would be very much appreciated!