Intel HD 4000 / GT 640M issue of games going to black screen

[ChristopherC71]

Hello,

I recently updated the family PC (Dell XPS all-in-one)to Windows 10. I have found issues with most games running in full screen mode. I get only black screen with sound as the game runs in the background. If I run it in window mode graphics work fine; Portal 2, Dungeon Defenders, StarWars Battlefront II... all old games so not stressing the machine. I have many more but I keep them aligned with what the machine can handle.

I have the latest graphic's drivers (win10\64bit) and I have spent a lot of time trying to tweak the Geforce Control Panel to no avail. PC works fine until game is launched in full screen mode and then only audio. Lame... Not willing to lower my expectations or reinstall windows 10. I will fall back to Window 8.1 only as a last resort (suck). At my wits end on this issue as numerous Google searches have not helped.

The following is not a work around for nvidia

1. start -> Control Panel

2. click NVIDIA Control Panel

3. On the left select 3D Settings -> Manage 3D Settings

4. On the right select the Program Settings Tab at the top

5. Click Add to add a program

6. Browse to the find or browseto the <game name>.exe

7. Change the drop down from "Use global setting"

to "High performance NVIDIA Processor"

Basic Hardware information

Motherboard: Dell XPS One 2710

Central Processing Unit(CPU): Intel® Core i7-3770S CPU @ 3.10GHz

Physical Memory: 8 GB

Video Card X 2

Intel® HD Graphics 4000 [v15.33.39.4276 (8/16/15)].

NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M [v361.43 (12/21/15)].

Audio Device X 4

Realtek High Definition Audio

[obobski]

Honestly, just upgrade the system back to Windows 7 or 8 and have a working machine again. These kinds of issues aren't surprising (at all) to hear about with Windows 10, and its likely a matter of the forced driver updates being incompatible with the Optimus solution in your computer. No need to have Windows 10 either - 7 and 8.1 are still well supported, and (from your own initial query) working solutions for your hardware. Let this be a lesson in why "have teh latest!!!111oneoneoneone omgzzz" is not always best practice in system administration and move on (with Windows 8.1 or 7) would be my advice. :blush:

[ChristopherC71]

Well said... I was frustrated with win 8.1 and hoping to get away. It has been a good move on my primary gaming rig. This issue has been to difficult to work around and I would like to get back to game time with my son and not "working on the computer."

[obobski]

Well said... I was frustrated with win 8.1 and hoping to get away. It has been a good move on my primary gaming rig. This issue has been to difficult to work around and I would like to get back to game time with my son and not "working on the computer."

 

If you have Windows Pro you have downgrade rights to the two previous versions of Windows - so you could get 7 Pro. Alternately it'd probably be worth the $90 and change to get a copy of 7 and be done with it (Home Premium and Pro are essentially identical from an end-user/consumer perspective; Pro includes two socket support and some extra networking functionality that you're unlikely to ever touch at home). The number of "my machine is a brick" after installing Windows 10 (especially with nvidia graphics) that I've seen recently is staggering, and it is 100% thanks to the forced updates and forced driver updates creating problems that didn't exist previously. Windows 8 and lower don't have that "feature" so you're good to go there; if you can't get along with Metro then Windows 7 is a very reasonable choice and hooey to the shills who insist its "wildly outdated" or "nobody uses it" - it constitutes a super-majority of systems today, and is still very well supported (and I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is forced, kicking and screaming, to keep 7 alive just as they did XP because they have been unable to offer a replacement product that the market wants or will adopt).

[HeyYou]

Trouble is, the 'downgrade' doesn't actually work. (short of a reinstall......) Too many things break when rolling Win 10 back to whatever it was you had before. (like task scheduler... every single task becomes corrupt.)

[obobski]

Trouble is, the 'downgrade' doesn't actually work. (short of a reinstall......) Too many things break when rolling Win 10 back to whatever it was you had before. (like task scheduler... every single task becomes corrupt.)

 

I would never actually use a Windows upgrade/downgrade automated installer - always do a clean install. But you still have downgrade rights (e.g. your licence terms stipulate this) and the OEM/reseller/etc (did I mention this doesn't apply, generally, to copies purchased as OEM at retail) is supposed to (at your request) provide you with the key for the previous version, and you can get the ISOs from Microsoft/MSDN (at least for Windows 8 you can), so you can do the clean install from there. Alternately if the system originally shipped with the prior version of Windows and has the media, or an imaged restore disc, you could just go ground-up from that. :blush:

[HeyYou]

In my experience, the act of 'upgrading' to Win10, also destroys any "restore" partition on the machine...... so, you would need to have physical media to reinstall.

 

The Win10 upgrade *seems* to go pretty smooth though. Although, being a "new" O/S from Microsoft, I prefer to let them "mature" for a while before actually using them myself. I only recently upgraded my home machine from win XP, to Win7 Pro. :D

[obobski]

In my experience, the act of 'upgrading' to Win10, also destroys any "restore" partition on the machine...... so, you would need to have physical media to reinstall.

 

The Win10 upgrade *seems* to go pretty smooth though. Although, being a "new" O/S from Microsoft, I prefer to let them "mature" for a while before actually using them myself. I only recently upgraded my home machine from win XP, to Win7 Pro. :D

 

I wouldn't use a "restore partition" either - no way of guaranteeing it hasn't been compromised at some point. External, static media, is severely underrated these days.

 

As far as Windows 10 in general - I wouldn't bother. Too much vaguery when it comes to Microsoft's collection of data and telemetry, and the forced driver updates and forced application uninstalls and re-configurations are a compatibility nightmare in action. Windows 7 has been largely acceptable, but that train will eventually end, and barring a new round of anti-trust litigation I don't see Windows being "good" into the future (based on the direction that 10 has taken the platform).

[HeyYou]

 

In my experience, the act of 'upgrading' to Win10, also destroys any "restore" partition on the machine...... so, you would need to have physical media to reinstall.

 

The Win10 upgrade *seems* to go pretty smooth though. Although, being a "new" O/S from Microsoft, I prefer to let them "mature" for a while before actually using them myself. I only recently upgraded my home machine from win XP, to Win7 Pro. :D

 

I wouldn't use a "restore partition" either - no way of guaranteeing it hasn't been compromised at some point. External, static media, is severely underrated these days.

 

As far as Windows 10 in general - I wouldn't bother. Too much vaguery when it comes to Microsoft's collection of data and telemetry, and the forced driver updates and forced application uninstalls and re-configurations are a compatibility nightmare in action. Windows 7 has been largely acceptable, but that train will eventually end, and barring a new round of anti-trust litigation I don't see Windows being "good" into the future (based on the direction that 10 has taken the platform).

 

Wholeheartedly concur. MS is going in a direction that I REALLY don't care for. The data collection without your knowledge/consent SHOULD be illegal.... (though I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there isn't something in the "Terms of Use" agreement to make it 'ok'....)

 

Still and all, even after MS ends support for Win 7, which isn't supposed to happen for several years yet..... it will still be useable, just won't get updates. Hopefully, before that time comes, someone else will come up with a Directx compatible O/S to replace windows entirely.

[obobski]

 

Wholeheartedly concur. MS is going in a direction that I REALLY don't care for. The data collection without your knowledge/consent SHOULD be illegal.... (though I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there isn't something in the "Terms of Use" agreement to make it 'ok'....)

 

Still and all, even after MS ends support for Win 7, which isn't supposed to happen for several years yet..... it will still be useable, just won't get updates. Hopefully, before that time comes, someone else will come up with a Directx compatible O/S to replace windows entirely.

 

 

This is going OT, but nonetheless: I don't see "another DX compatible OS" being the end-game here, primarily because MS owns DirectX. Instead, the recent (and relatively rapid) move to non-DirectX APIs that will run on multiple platforms is where I see things going on a larger and larger scale - game development is so expensive these days that publishers want games on as many platforms as possible; we've seen the move from games that live exclusively on one console or DirectX/Windows to games that live on all consoles and Windows, to the recent inclusion of OS X for many titles - it wouldn't surprise me to see yet another "broadening" of things and games being released more or less across the board for Windows, OS X, Linux/SteamOS, BSD, and consoles, at which point Windows will no longer have "killer app" status (it holds no other "exclusives" over basically any other platform at this point).

 

That, or ReactOS and/or other emulation/compatibility layers (e.g. Wine) will continue to evolve to a point where a similar situation is reached. Either way, the next five years will certainly be interesting for PC gaming, at least on the software side of things, and I'm guessing that the "typical gaming system" in 2020 will look much different than it did in 2015, and likely moreso than comparing 2015 to 2010.