Nvidia Optimus drivers will not install (everything else installs just fine). Halp?

[slugg]

After a Windows Update, I was getting a BSOD on bootup whenever the Nvidia drivers were loading. I confirmed this by reading through the crash dump. So I uninstalled the Nvidia drivers and all was well. When I reinstalled them, Optimus was missing.

Everything is there: Nvidia control panel, 3D Vision, HD Audio, PhysX... Everything except Optimus. I'm not getting any error messages or anything, but I don't have the Optimus driver installed. I tried using Nvidia's driver package, Lenovo's, and even hacked drivers. None of them will install Optimus.

I'm stumped... Please help

 

[slugg]

Okay, so this wasn't so obvious to me. Maybe this'll help someone else in the future.

As of some recent version (I'm guessing 300+?) of the driver, you don't actually see "Nvidia Optimus Driver" in the add/remove programs utility. Furthermore, it's not default behavior to have the Optimus tray icon enabled; you must enable it in the Nvidia Control Center. So while it may seem like it's missing, it's not. I believe it's just lumped in as part of the Nvidia Display Driver.