Backing Off Intel Graphics Driver

Backing Off Intel Graphics Driver

Ok then: I was operating under the belief that no harm should come to Lenovo PCs after updating to Intel GPU drives via DSA. Apparently I was mistaken: I’ll show evidence that for the ThinkStation P3 Ultra at least, the DSA-supplied Arc & Iris Xe drivers pose problems. Hence, I’m backing off Intel graphics driver on that machine.

Why I’m Backing Off Intel Graphics Driver

Check out the lead-in graphic. It shows Reliability Monitor with 2 crashes on both 1/22 and 1/23 for the IntelGraphicsSoftware Service process. Not good! Indeed, it causes about a 5-point drop in the reliability index in two sharp dips.

To me, that makes it pretty clear that — at least for this PC — the Intel driver is not working properly in its runtime environment. The notion that I picked up was that updating Windows 11 graphics drivers would not necessarily overwrite OEM customizations. FWIW, Copilot confirms this. But the evidence from ReliMon on the P3 is pretty hard to contest. Methinks Intel is still right to post its warning in DSA where such drivers are concerned (with a checkbox for users to explicitly opt in anyway), to wit:

And indeed, now that I’ve uninstalled that driver and reverted to a Lenovo driver dated 10/29/2024, I’ve experienced no further issues with Intel graphics stuff. That said I do have an APPCRASH for the IntelSoftwareAssetManagerServer.exe process. But a quick hop to the Intel Support Community shows that this belongs to PROSet Wireless stuff not graphics. So there’s a problem for another day!

Here in Windows World it’s always something. Lately, those “somethings” have an interesting number of elements with Intel’s name involved. Go figure…

 

 

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