I tried Provigil two years ago and it came in powder format and I had to mix it. It tasted bitter and had no pronounced effect me. I had better response to coffee but then again they say placebo is hell of a drug.
Also, the effects of modafinil are obvious. In addition to being coffee++, the metabolites make your urine and sweat smell weird. If someone says modafinil didn't work on them, it's probably because they ordered it illicitly and got counterfeit drugs.
Are you perhaps thinking of a different nootropic? From your description, piracetam seems much more likely. It typically comes in powder form, and its effects can be charitably described as subtle.
Side note: If you're interested in nootropics and modafinil, I highly recommend gwern's articles on the subjects[1][2].
Powder is not unheard of: Air Sealed use to sell modafinil powder sourced from Sun, which was apparently legitimate and quite competitive on a per mg basis.
But as far as I know, they were the only powder source and they shut down quite a while ago (maybe 2011? I'd have to check my price-tables to see when I dropped them), and only in the past few months have any new powder vendors showed up (on the blackmarkets). So unless one of us is considerably off on dates or my knowledge of modafinil sellers is less complete than I thought, I'm not sure where noname123 could've gotten modafinil powder.