Video driver hard crash (Black screen or freeze frame) on integrated HD4000 card

[User1585878087287578]

Hello.

I'm running an Intel HD 4000 chipset (full system details at the end) and I've experienced a nasty problem. Long story short: Updating to latest drivers causes full system crash while gaming, some times to black screen and sometimes the image on the screen will freeze with a very short audio loop that's similar to a buzz. Doesn't happen with all games however, only on some of the more demanding games; note that this was NOT happening since the update in January, I was able to play those same games with no problems.

More on the problems:

Few months back I was experiencing horrid crashes 15-30 minutes into gaming (on some slightly demanding games, but not on others) which I ended up atributing to some form of GPU overheating. Eventually, with the release of the HD4000 drivers january this year, the crashes completely stopped as did the apparent overheating, proving that it wasn't a hardware issue. I was able to play at acceptable visual quality and framerate on with no problem on any games up until the latest driver update, which came out mere days ago.

I installed the most up to date drivers but I had the thought to uninstall them and re-install them again (as one is always recomended to do). To my surprise I was getting much better framerate on a game I've been playing for quite a few days (for many hours at a time with 0 problems) However, 20-30 minutes into me playing said game after re-installing the newest drivers, the hard crashes started once again. I made sure to try it out twice just in case it wasn't some freak accident, but there was no doubt that the overheating had begun again (no readings available unfortunately, they temperature was taken "by hand") and thus the hard-crashes to black screen followed suit (again, this is only during gameplay, and only on games that are somewhat demanding for the system.)

I tried rolling back the drivers to the previous version by uninstalling the newer ones and then downloading January's from the support site, but for some strange reason the hard crash happened again twice, I was forced to do a system restore to 03/31 and managed to play my game for well over an hour, no crash whatsoever, opnce again prpving there is no fault with the hardware or set up.

My system is currently:

• Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (10.0, Build 18363) (18362.19h1_release.190318-1202)
• MOBO: ASrock h61m-dgs
• BIOS: P1.60 (type: UEFI)
• Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz (8 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
• Memory: 8192MB RAM
• Available OS Memory: 7894MB RAM
• Page File: 4792MB used, 4982MB available
• DirectX Version: DirectX 12
• Card name: Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000
• Driver File Version: 10.18.0010.5129 (English)

Thanks for your help in advance.

[AlHill]

I do not have an answer for you, but thanks for the excellent information you have provided.

Doc

[Stefan3D]

Judging from the complaints all over the web, your issues are probably caused by the latest Windows updates:

https://www.google.com/search?q=windows+freeze+1909+update

[User1585878087287578]

Could be. wouldn't be the first time Microsoft breaches the "if it ain't broke..." maxim, though the man in that thread has problems with crashing when idle rather than when gaming.