Sorry if this has been answered, but I couldn't find a solution in the forums/google.

Ok, I bought a new laptop and upgraded from win8 to win7. When it came to downloading the GPU drivers, before the program could even get started installing, it said "cannot install driver need intel(r) drivers first"

Fine, so I download intels integrated graphics drivers, and then successfully install the nvidia drivers for my 840m.

Problem is, under device manager, when my integrated intel graphics are enabled, my 840m drivers throws the most ambiguous error code known to man (code 43 "something's not working right". Thanks Windows) and automatically disables the hardware.

If I disable the integrated drivers and disable/enable the 840m drivers it says it's working fine, but I have my doubts that it's actually utilizing the 840m drivers.

I downloaded GPU-Z, and it can detect that I have an 840M, and it detects the drivers, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of 'clarity' on my screen, for a lack of a better word. I would think it would be a sharper image is what I mean, and i'm just not getting that.

Can anybody help?

Run the built in render test inside GPU-Z, you should see the card getting hotter while running the test, this will confirm the card is being used.
 

 
GREEN = Render Test.
Sensors Tab will show you the temp of your card.

it's not utilizing it at all. no clocks. what do?

Looks like it's working to me as you have the iGPU disabled. Looks like GPU-Z isn't picking up the info of the card. Try GPU-Z 7.1... http://www.techpowerup.co...hpowerup-gpu-z-v0-7-1/

rpal1211
it's not utilizing it at all. no clocks. what do?

0 MHz clocks doesn't mean it isn't working.  0 MHz clocks just means that GPU-Z isn't very compatible with your video card.
 
What does your Sensors tab look like?
 
 

ASUS N56JN. I just installed win8 and all the drivers on ASUS website. works fine now, must just not be compatible with win7