Display Driver Crashing

[Foreverseeking]

I am a huge fan of the Surface series, My wife has the Surface Pro 3, I now have the Surface Pro 4. I am getting a little frustrated with the device though, no matter how great it is (and the new type cover is truly amazing.)

problems:

- Display driver crashes (I thought blue screening was a relic from XP, it's back in my life with a vengeance.)
- Display flickering at low brightness (device is like a disco strobe light at night)
- Doesn't wake from hibernate (the device has always crashed after leaving it on sleep all night. Hello windows seems to still be working, as the red light comes on, but nothing else functions).
- Battery drain when not in use. The SP4 lost 12% last night doing while asleep over 7 hours. The sp3 only looses a couple of percent.

I would never swap my device for any thing else, as I love it and I'm sure these bugs will get ironed out. The thing is, along with so many random issues I've had with windows 10, I could never ever recommend this product and windows 10 to less tech savvy people (aka my parents).

I love Microsoft's current direction, however they must start focussing on reliability as opposed to always looking to add or change features within windows. The software side is simply too buggy for the average user. (as note, I would consider myself a power user).

 

[Omni]

Since TH2 Edge has been the only thing to cause the crash, but that's only happened twice and its always on this website. Its really not a issues that's worrying me much though.

 

[Foreverseeking]

I can reproduce the crash in Edge consistently on the SP4. Go to Cats of Instagram, click archive on the left, and then scroll quickly up and down

Hey, tried it out just now, it doesn't crash my edge. Maybe it's been fixed?

EDIT: Just had a display driver crash on the surfaceforums.net website.

 

[GreyFox7]

Are you saying it's a hardware issue then?

It may be a contributing factor but there's more to it than a straight black or white, yes or no answer.

There are variances to the performance of chips. when they are made they get tested and binned based on the characteristics of testing they pass. The end result is there is still variance in performance between like binned parts. Product binning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Enter the driver. A driver will need to accommodates different timing based on the performance of the actual chip within the variances. see this article from the past... https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2665946
From this article: Cause -

This behavior can occur for one or more of the following reasons:

• You may need to install the latest updates for your display driver
• Visual effects, or too many programs running in the background may be slowing your PC down
• The GPU is taking more time than permitted to display graphics to your monitor

Related link to the WDDM For more information about Timeout Detection and Recovery, see Timeout Detection and Recovery of GPUs through WDDM.

Windows Display Driver Model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
​

Note: I tried this setting mentioned in the above article and cannot say that it fixed or improved the situation. In addition I got a BlueScreen shortly after making this setting. However my SP4 had experienced other BlueScreens before and also after turning it off. I attempted to Reset it 4 times and in two out of 4 tries it BlueScreened during setup. That SP4 is no longer in my possession and was returned.

In another time long long ago, it was a practice in CPU architecture to self monitor and retry failed CPU instructions. The obvious result of which would be slower performance. The execution time of an individual instruction is quite small (fractions of a millisecond, microsecond, nanosecond) so the result of retrying one instruction is inconsequential. More, and at some point it begins to show.

Ever wonder why benchmark scores vary even on pristine configured systems? it's an approximate science

A lot of you are now going TMI, TMI, ...
how can a computer even work with operator retries, varied timing, imprecise results, can this even be trusted to add 1 + 1

And we rode one of these to the moon and back ​

TL;DR This is a problem for the engineers to sort out and effectuate a suitable fix to mitigate the undesired outcomes.

 

[leeshor]

I was playing around the unit at the Microsoft Store and notice four crashes for the duration on my one hour stay. It is really bad. What causes the crash?

That's a matter of MUCH debate. My SP4 from Oct. 28th only crashed once, on the 28th. I have not had any video crashes or BSODs since then. I don't use Edge, I have turned off Edge as a background process. I use Firefox, with AdBlockPlus and currently also NoScropt.

I think I could/would cause some video issues if I used Edge but I'm not planning on it. I want to see how long I can go without any crashes. So far, so good.

 

[GreyFox7]

One thing I noticed while testing FireFox was that it scrolled differently than IE or Edge. I previously called it jerky but it may be more accurate to say chunky so if that behavior affects the timing of graphics requests it may explain any apparent difference.

IIRC there's an option for smooth scrolling in IE (perhaps Edge as well) possibly turning off that option may "help". In my experience it was possible to stress induce DD crashes with FireFox as well so it may help but doesn't eliminate all occurrences and I doubt disabling smooth scrolling would either but it might reduce the number.

I also read where some users got DD ceases with Photoshop I believe it was.

These intermittent/random issues or scenario based issues are difficult to pin down because you think something you did is helping then it happens again. It can be hard to tell for sure what does or doesn't make a difference when the cause is the timing of several interactions. It may appear to work perfectly unless you do these particular things or sequence of things or run into a particular sequence of ADs on web pages. That's totally random.

For a while I was able to reproduce the condition by editing a large post on this site with several images uploaded but then I couldn't and nothing happened in between. At one point I got 3 or 4 driver crashes in a row doing that and reproduced it a couple of times, an hour or two later nothing.

They will eventually fix it, most likely with Firmware and or Driver updates and all the different applications will magically just work.

In the meantime don't step on any cracks or chalk lines, don't walk under ladders, and stay away from black cats.

 

[macmee]

I've been getting the display driver crash like crazy today and yesterday - never got it before then

 

[jtcb]

That's a matter of MUCH debate. My SP4 from Oct. 28th only crashed once, on the 28th. I have not had any video crashes or BSODs since then. I don't use Edge, I have turned off Edge as a background process. I use Firefox, with AdBlockPlus and currently also NoScropt.

I think I could/would cause some video issues if I used Edge but I'm not planning on it. I want to see how long I can go without any crashes. So far, so good.

Is there any way to permanently uninstall Edge in SP4? I only use Chrome and IE on my desktop and I don't see myself switching to another browser when I purchase SP4 later.

 

[leeshor]

Is there any way to permanently uninstall Edge in SP4? I only use Chrome and IE on my desktop and I don't see myself switching to another browser when I purchase SP4 later.

Not that I'm aware of. It can be disabled as a background task and a different browser set as the default. Edge appears to be integrated into the OS.

 

[GreyFox7]

Not that I'm aware of. It can be disabled as a background task and a different browser set as the default. Edge appears to be integrated into the OS.

Wow I thought Edge was supposed to be a Store app... I guess not or maybe it changed along the way. You are right though, I do t see any way to remove it, but I can't remove some of the other apps either. A lot of stuff is getting pushed via the Store... seemingly without options.

 

[RichBrownsDesk]

I have yet to see a video driver crash and I've been using my SP4 for over 2 weeks. I am however having video issues on one of my desktops after the Th2 update.

Which is more proof that this is a Windows 10 / Intel issue, not a Surface Pro 4 issue. Like I've said before, I had the same issue on the Surface 3, and you can google practically any newer laptop name along with "Windows 10" and "display driver crash" and find that others are having the same issue.

EDIT: I decided to test my hypothesis and Google "HP Envy Windows 10 display driver crash." First result was this:
HP Envy 15 Display Driver Crashing on certain games - HP ...
h30434.www3.hp.com › Laptop & Notebook › Display/Video
Windows® 10 Technical Preview (Read Only) ... HP Envy 15 Display Driver Crashing on certain games. Options. Mark as New; Bookmark; Subscribe; Subscribe to RSS Feed;

 

[GreyFox7]

Which is more proof that this is a Windows 10 / Intel issue, not a Surface Pro 4 issue. Like I've said before, I had the same issue on the Surface 3, and you can google practically any newer laptop name along with "Windows 10" and "display driver crash" and find that others are having the same issue.

But is anyone having an issue who is not running an Intel CPU with iGPU?.