windows

Vista display driver takes a break

289 Comments

I’m seeing an annoying error on my Portege M400 running Vista. The thing is almost clear of beta drivers now, after numerous downloads from Toshiba, including the display driver. The graphics chipset is a Mobile Intel 945GM, and I have a production release driver dated 13th December 2006, version 7.14.10.1151, though I saw the same problem with earlier releases.

Specifically, from time to time the display blanks out and an error 4101 is logged. Sometimes I get this supposedly reassuring toast pop-up:

The warning message is:

Display driver igfx stopped responding and has successfully recovered

The error is worse than it sounds. The screen blanking is irritating, and sometimes causes the current application to crash (I’ve seen this with games). I’ve also seen it when working with multiple displays. Fortunately it only seems to occur with the display is being stressed in some way – I can work all day in Word and Excel, and not see the problem.

I’ve tried turning off Aero and it makes no difference.

A bug in Intel’s driver I suppose (I never get this on my Vista desktop), though it is not exclusive to Intel; this user reports the same problem with a GeForce 7900.

This is the kind of thing that spoils Vista right now. I think this OS will work much better six months from now.

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289 thoughts on “Vista display driver takes a break”

  1. > I tried updating the driver, but it says I
    > have the latest already installed.
    Scott, have you tried the download from Intel’s site? I’d be surprised if this were pre-installed as it only appeared last week.

    Tim

  2. Having the same problem while trying to play Age of Empires 3. Locks up after 10-20 min of play.

  3. Steve,

    > Having the same problem while trying to play
    > Age of Empires 3.

    Is this with the latest Intel driver? It helps a lot – though Age of Empires 3 is exceptionally demanding and these integrated graphics cards are barely up to it.

    Tim

  4. Ok….I seemed to have solved mine. The drivers that are on the intel site will not install if you run the exe file….soooooooo since the exe is just a glorified zip file I used WinRar to extract the exe file and updated the driver manually in device manager. Have not had a speck of trouble since doing this. Warcraft runs great as does a few others that were having the same issue. Not sure if this is for everyone but I am not planning on paying HP to do thier job and get the driver update from Intel as soon as it comes out and not after taking thier sweet time and our sweet money to do so.

  5. I agree with J. Rickman. I also found Tims advice to find the Intel driver, and install that directly. Ever since then, ZERO issues with World Of Warcraft. In fact, now I can really boost the video settings, and the game still flys by with no video hiccups!!!! Thanks Tim for the great advice.

    My problems with Quake 4 seem to be deeper than the video compatibility. I have tried re-installing about 5 times now, and the game always crashes as the intro video starts to play (even with the lowest video settings). That may be an issue of compatibility with the Dual Core Intel processor?? Maybe a Vista issue too, but I ruled that out by changing the startup mode to “Win XP SP2”, still no improvement. Oh well, Im still happy I have gotten rid of those video problems. Thanks again for the great forum!!

  6. I, too, have WinRAR, but the .exe isn’t extracting so I can’t apply this fix. I both manually DLed the driver and also had Windows automatically search for updates, but it said they were up to date. =/ Is there no fix but to go back to XP?

  8. I’m having the same problem with my new computer where it is saying that I already have the most up to date driver when I try to install the new driver. I used WinRAR to extract the .exe file, but how do you manually update the driver in device manager. I can’t figure it out.

  9. I’m having problems with this driver also.

    Even with the latest driver from the Intel website my comp is slow at rendering web pages and loading pics.

    http://www.pcpitstop.com says my graphics speed is a third of what it should be.

  10. Someone help me, this is driveing me insane. It keeps going black and the igfx has stopped working. UGH i cant stand it. Someone please tell me a way to fix this. please please please

  12. I have the same problem with vista and my new chipset on my toshiba and city of heros

    it works sometimes if i reload it

    but then after about 3 or 4 hours of play it goes haywire again

    any ideas people
    thanks

    karl

  14. ok…basically once you unrar the files. Go to device manager and find the on board. Right click and at the properties window select the driver tab. Select update driver and browse to the folder you unzipped. The updated driver should be located in the Graphics folder found within. Hope this helps. 🙂

  15. well after some looking into it, Lineage 2 doesnt support Vista, said screw Vista, formated and installed XP, installed video and ethernet drivers and it runs perfectly. only question, does anyone know where i can find the audio drivers?!!!!!!!

  16. I just bought myself a Sony Vio on Tuesday the 21 and it came with windows vista. When I tried to play world of warcraft burning crusade every 1-5 minutes it would black screen for 5 seconds then resume and come up with the same error message if its a problem with vista and there is an update to fix it can some one please send me an email with the patch link? my email is miketv3000@hotmail.com

  17. I was much happier with windows XP this Vista is not ready to be released! I wanted XP but I went to buy 2 lap tops at one time and bought it the weekend before Vista came out so they would not even allow us to take our lap tops home until Vista was released. Something needs to be done aout the IGFX driver and fast. This is rediculous to spend that amount of money and then the windows program is crappy!!! I would like to know if anyone knows how to slow the glitchy parts.
    Thank You!
    Darcie
    dnceask@yahoo.com

  19. i bought a toshiba a motnh ago and it had xp and it was running fine then there was a problemw itht he computewr so they replaced it witht he same one and it also had hp and 2 weeks later it messed up so they gave me a better hp and it came with vista i install wow and then i get this crap. does anyone know how long it will be before the address this problem i mean if enough people complain shouldnt they be focusing on such a big problem

  20. Basically the drivers for the chip are not up do date. What this means is we are waiting on the PC vendor to update thier drivers, and who knows how long that will take. As my notes above say I downloaded the drivers from the intel site but got the message that they were not valid for my pc. But you can unzip the exe file and manually install the update. This may not be for everyone but I have had no problems with World of Warcraft, Black and White 2, or Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault.

  23. Guys, this problem seems to be common to many chipsets and graphics cards, I’ve heared of some people with ATI cards experiencing this too, I for example have a VIA chipset motherboard with a GeForce 8800 having the exact same problem, I can’t run any 3d games, the display driver recovers and returns to the desktop within seconds on starting a game, even thoughI’ve updated my mb bios, instaled the latest VIA Hypeion driver, and various nVidia drivers. This is sooo frustrating. Something so fundamental should have been resolved before Vista’s fial release, after all I have a DirectX 10 graphics card wchich is supposedly designed for Vista! I sometimes even get the error message when browsing in IE7 or playing a video in media player, this is a joke!

  24. Gavin,

    I agree it is not just Intel’s driver; on the other hand I never get this problem on my desktops which have a variety of different GeForce chipsets, so it is not inherent in Vista itself. I wonder if it is something like a bug in Microsoft’s driver samples that got replicated by several vendors?

    Tim

  25. hi. i had the same problem. and not only that, i have regular bluescreen errors. let me say something: vista really sucks.

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