Beta Intel HD 520 Drivers are out, and they seem to address the random Driver Crashing Issues

coasterfreak212

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Hey Guys,

So I posted a while back with a potential graphics fix by force installing the Official Intel Drivers before Microsoft released various updates to address the graphics issues. Well I'm back again and I have some news.

A couple of days ago, Intel released some Beta drivers for Intel HD 520. This driver is up to 4326 (current ones from MS are at 4308). I have been using the beta drivers for a bit and it seems to address the random driver failures. I have been going to sites I know that cause the drivers to crash/recover and I haven't been able to get it to crash using the beta drivers (at least not yet). I've been doing these tests on Edge with HW acceleration on (from my experience, if you have the "Internet Options" of IE set to Software Acceleration instead of Hardware, Edge also adopts this setting).

The cool thing about installing these Beta/Official drivers from Intel is that they don't seem to effect the normal driver release schedule from MS. The last time there was updated drivers from MS via Windows Update, the official Intel drivers were replaced with the ones that were provided via Windows Update. So you can kind of view these Beta drivers as an "Insider Preview", as the drivers will get updated to the MS official ones once MS releases them via Windows Update.

With this in mind, we can assume that MS has a release schedule for the Intel Drivers that is slightly delayed for testing and modification purposes. I am assuming this, as Intel had released their 4300 drivers slightly before the Surface Book was released. MS did their version of the update with the firmware updates bringing it to 4308 (Intel doesn't have a 4308 Release). Considering these drivers are still under the "Beta" tag from Intel itself, we won't being official WU releases of 4326 until much later. So if you're willing to test it out now, here are the instructions again so you can bypass the OEM setup check.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...a-Graphics-Driver-for-Windows-7-8-1-10-15-40-

1.Download the 64 bit ZIP version with the link above and extract
2.Right click the bottom left corner on your desktop and select ?Device Manager?
3.Open ?Display adapters?, right click the Intel HD 520 graphics card and hit ?Update Driver Software??
4.Select the ?Browser my computer for driver software?
5.Select ?Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer?
6.Click ?Have Disk?? and browser to the extracted Intel Driver Software, and select the INF from the Graphics folder
7.Now click ?Ok? and continue installing the driver
8. Once the driver is done installing, finish the installation by running the Intel setup.exe in the driver folder.

Let us know what the results are if you decide to take this route. I'll update you guys later on in a couple of days with any major results from my own testing. By the way, unfortunately, this still doesn't address the Maps issue with the roads disappearing yet. I also haven't had a chance to see if this helps with the Connected Standby issues. I'll check on those later.

Happy testing y'all!
 

GregCra

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Hi - thanks for the detailed write up. I just did what you suggested - so far so good.. i'll let you know if I have any crashes. The only thing i'm not sure why I did was your step number 8 - running setup. It looked like the driver was already installed and this step may not have been necessary? But I did it anyways. Thanks again!
 
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coasterfreak212

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The only thing i'm not sure why I did was your step number 8 - running setup. It looked like the driver was already installed and this step may not have been necessary? But I did it anyways. Thanks again!

I do this so that I can get the fancy Intel Graphics Control Panel. There's some toggles that you can do with having this control panel instead of having it do everything with default settings.

Unless you get that control panel regardless of running the setup or not. I haven't tried it without, so I'm not sure :p
 

zombie0

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For what it's worth, I've installed these new drivers and they do not address the inability to connect two 4K displays concurrently. That issue remains. But it's good to hear that they have (potentially) addressed the crashing problems others have been experiencing—though I had only seen that once on my unit prior to this update.
 

coasterfreak212

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Okay guys, so a bit of an update



  • I had 1 Driver Crash/Recover so far, so the issue isn't completely gone
    • This happened on a medical site that seemed to have a lot of ads and images
    • The typical sites that gave me problems have been fantastic so far however (Facebook, Buzzfeed, Tumblr, Craigslist, etc, all did not crash on me like it usually would)
  • I turned on Connected Standby and tested it for an hour. I went from 94% to 91% so it may not be resolved just yet.
    • When I generated a Sleep Study, Intel was NOT listed, instead the WiFi was as a top offender. This means that the Intel drivers might have fixed the sleep drain.
    • Certain Apps in the Study were listed that ideally shouldn't be utilizing Connected Standby (such as Crackle and Foursquare)
    • I will test this again overnight to see if Intel gets listed in the Sleep Study
  • When returning from a long sleep, my Windows Hello camera wouldn't turn on. It would just stay turned off with no red indicator
    • I will continue testing this, as it might have been a coincidence and not consistent
    • Returning from a shorter sleep, the Hello Camera does still turn on
  • The Lockscreen has a weird bug where it shows the background image in a smaller scaling that hovers in the center
    • This may be due to the listed known issues from Intel stating "Forced Application Scaling feature is not enabled in Windows 10"
    • It does this funky thing where it still unlocks with the image sliding up, meaning that the lock screen background is literally a shade that goes over the login screen. Kinda funny actually
    • It happens randomly, it seems
  • Battery life still seems to be about the same from my testing, so it doesn't seem to address that just yet
    • Over the next couple days I'll check if the battery life improves or not.
  • Brightness and Auto-brightness seems to be more accurate than the MS Drivers
    • The auto-brightness noticeably adjusts based on my lighting (not sure if this is a good thing, as it might be too sensitive)
    • Manual brightness has more options than the MS drivers, which is nice to use

Overall, it seems like there's progress being made. I hope Intel keeps it up and really get's the drivers top notch so that Microsoft and the Surface Book will be the device that it was intended to be. I'll keep you guys posted!
 

coasterfreak212

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So I did a sleep overnight and the drain went down by 12%. Doing a Powercfg Sleep Study it shows that the duration of the drain was for 2 hours of activity before it decided to doze to hibernate. The frustrating thing is that it doesn't know what the drain activators were. It says "Unknown Client" for the 2 hour session. I will continue testing to see if I can get it to show me the offending clients. Not sure if the reason why the activators are unknown is due to it going to hibernation.

True, it sucks. But people are often beta testers for much more! Cars are never perfect! :smile: But progress is being made rather.

Yeah, just imagine all those Volkswagen and Audi beta test drivers over the years :grin:
 
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GregCra

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Finally had the driver fail for me.. but that was after almost 2 days of use and it was the first time. Very different from the old driver that would die many times/day. Better - but not 100% yet.
 

coasterfreak212

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Another update from my end



  • Connected Standby still draining
    • This time, Intel did show up as orange, but the Wifi still showed up as Red. Not sure why. Turning off Connected Standby for now
  • Battery Life
    • My battery life is still around 6 hours. I am not sure if that is actually what it's supposed to be, but I have still yet to see 12 hours.

I'll keep you guys posted!
 

zerospace-net

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Thanks for the info, guys! I'm having the display driver crash at least once a day now (since the 1511 update), so I'm watching this thread with interest.

coasterfreak212: I'm not sure why you expected to have all your issues solved by an updated display driver. The only thing I'd be looking for is to see fewer or no display driver crashes. The battery drain & overall battery life are probably something else entirely.
 

coasterfreak212

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coasterfreak212: I'm not sure why you expected to have all your issues solved by an updated display driver. The only thing I'd be looking for is to see fewer or no display driver crashes. The battery drain & overall battery life are probably something else entirely.

Not necessarily. From my observations, there was a day when my battery life was 3 hours for the whole battery. On this day, I was using just Edge with constant display driver crashes. This was before the first firmware update that fixed the color issues and the flickering. However, before said firmware update, I did the same thing as above with installing the previous official Intel drivers. Next day, it was 6ish hours.

Overall, what I noticed was that whenever the intel driver was being used, it would fluctuate the battery indicator something fierce. I would be at full charge and the reading would read the expected 12-13 hours of estimated battery using basic apps like Word and Outlook. As soon as I open Edge and go to a heavy media site like Facebook or a site with a lot of video ads, the battery indicator would spike down harshly and immediately to 3-4 hours at 100% charge.

And more or less, I'm not anticipating updated Intel drivers to be the main savior of the woes with the Surface Book, but I surely think it's a large reason considering most people with issues correlate it to the bleeding edge Skylake chips. I'm also looking at other potential reasons for issues, such as WiFi drivers and SSD drivers.

Overall though, the Beta Intel drivers make the Surface Book feel a lot more stable than it did before.
 

Larry Piercy

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Wow, I would hate to be a beta tester for $2000.

Thanks for the insult - but I can see from your posts you hate Microsoft, so I won't take it personally.

I actually buy a lot of day one products - and many get firmware updates etc. Some view it as a pain but I get a lot of pleasure and productivity out of my expensive toys. You only live once, and only for a short time, so buy what makes you happy.
 

JackDiesel14

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The new drivers combined with editing the hosts as a form of ad blocking seemed to have cut down if not stopped the display driver crashes on Edge. I haven't had one since I've made the changes.
 

CygnusOrion

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Thanks for the insult - but I can see from your posts you hate Microsoft, so I won't take it personally.

I actually buy a lot of day one products - and many get firmware updates etc. Some view it as a pain but I get a lot of pleasure and productivity out of my expensive toys. You only live once, and only for a short time, so buy what makes you happy.

I own an XBox One, bought a full retail license of Windows 8.1 Pro, bought a Lumia 900(for free due to promotion and terrible bugs that first week) and a Lumia 920 at full price. I've bought my fair share of Microsoft stuff over the years, but far more Apple gear.
 

coasterfreak212

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Cygnus, I'd like to keep this thread for discussion about the Beta Intel drivers. If you would like to speak of your complaints about the Surface Book, I respectfully request you go on the other big thread about how Microsoft needs to fix the Surface Book.
 

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