Asus N55S laptop graphics card keeps crashing in Win10

mld218 · 02 Nov 2017

Hello,

I have been having a screen freezing issue for awhile now. My Asus laptop is hooked up to an HP 2310m monitor as well as a Samsung TV using a monoprice HDMI splitter. It has been hook up that way for quite awhile. I rarely use the TV with the computer but its there when I want it.

For a while my mouse and screen has been freezing and the only way to get the computer working again was to turn off the laptop with the power button and restart. I have tried a few of the fixes on the internet and nothing seemed to work. Last weekend I reinstalled Win10 in place and for a few days I had no problems. Unfortunately now it has started up again, but this time I am getting a message in the notification section saying "Driver failed to start" Display Driver failed to start using microsoft basic driver instead. When this happens my external monitor freezes and my laptop screen comes up. Looking in the device manager my GeForce 555M card is no longer visible and the Intel HD graphics 3000 adapter has the exclamation point attached to it. When I reboot its fixed but then happens again quickly. I have tried installing updated driver for each but nothing has seemed to work.

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated as this is driving me crazy.

Thanks
Mike

alphanumeric · 03 Nov 2017

I would go to the ASUS support page for your model and see if there is a driver for Windows 10 available. I've seen a lot of issues/problems with switchable graphics when two separate drivers are installed. In your case GeForce and Intel. OEM's often make a custom driver for those type of setups, mismatched manufacturers.

I'm lucky my ASUS K75DE uses AMD graphics for both. AMD Radeon HD 7660G + 7670M. I can get my drivers right from AMD and they work. Or I can just use the Windows update supplied driver, and my switchable graphics works.

Helmut · 03 Nov 2017

Don't agree, I have dual Graphics (Optimus) Intel HD graphics and Nvidia, and there is no problem with that arrangement, worked for 4 years on Windows updates, thru Windows 8.1 to Windows 10.

The problem I think is 'gamers' giving out the usual you must have latest Intel/Nvidia drivers bit, and using 3rd party uninstallers, and acting on that messing things up on Optimus Laptops.

What is more likely on a machine of that age is a dying HDD so that's an obvious candidate to check, guides for that are in the tutorials on here.

Another easy check is on temperatures of the CPU/iGPU and Nvidia chips.

That's some starters that you may already have done, but people never say what they actually have done.

alphanumeric · 04 Nov 2017

A lot of the issues I saw posted were exactly what you said. Stock install from the OEM worked just fine but they couldn't leave it at that. They manually installed "the latest and greatest" and then couldn't understand why the switchable graphics didn't work right anymore? I imagine its a lot better now than when switchable graphics first showed up. Mine is AMD / AMD and has always worked. Stock Windows supplied drivers or drivers right from AMD.

mld218 · 04 Nov 2017

Thank you all for the information. A few things I have done was update the drivers. Unfortunately no driver exist for this model Asus on the asus website after windows 7 maybe I never should have done windows 8 or windows 10 for that matter. I did check the ram and harddrive for errors and no errors were reported for either. I did check the GPU temp and CPU temps

GPU seems to be hanging around 80 degrees C not sure if that is good or bad
CPU temps are ranging from 75 to 98 degrees C

The manufactures date on this machine is Oct 2011 it has a i7 chip with 8 gb of ram.

Once again thanks for any help you can provide
Mike

alphanumeric · 04 Nov 2017

mld218 said:

Unfortunately no driver exist for this model Asus on the asus website after windows 7 maybe I never should have done windows 8 or windows 10 for that matter.

I had a feeling that might be the case. My K75DE shipped with Windows 8.0. No Windows 10 drivers for it on the ASUS support page. It doesn't hurt to have a look see though, sometimes you get lucky. I don't have an answer for you unfortunately. Not at this time anyway.

RoasterMen · 05 Nov 2017

My ASUS X550ZE originally shipped with Windows 8.1. They had drivers available for Windows 10 too so I upgraded my laptop to Windows 10 then did a clean install of Windows 10. Used the drivers from the manufacturer's website except for the graphics drivers.

Dual Graphics on my laptop (Radeon R5 M230 for dedicated and Radeon R5 from the APU) is working as it should.

alphanumeric · 05 Nov 2017

The way "I think" it works for most OEM's is as follows. If said device actually shipped from the factory at some point with Windows 10 pre installed, you'll find drivers for 10 on the support page. If it didn't, like my laptop, you won't. Most only make up drivers for a specific device if they have too. They'd rather I bought a newer model that comes with the newer OS already installed. Mine has next to no Windows 8.1 drivers either. On the plus side, all my hardware works out of the box with the stock Windows update supplied drivers. Well almost all, the only thing that doesn't work is turning off my touchpad with the function key. The touchpad works, I just can't disable it via the keyboard. Installing the ATK utility fixes that. I actually use the touchpad so no big deal for me. All the important stuff works just fine.

RoasterMen · 05 Nov 2017

We have the same problem with the touchpad. The only thing working with it is when you plug a USB mouse, touchpad is automatically disabled. but u cant enable or disable it.

alphanumeric · 05 Nov 2017

The ATKACPI driver and hotkey-related utilities is what you need to get all the special function keys working. Windows update installs one, its just not the right one, or not the newest version. If I remember correctly it was a bit of a pain to find it on the ASUS site. There is one listed in the available drivers for my laptop for Windows 8, I just don't remember if that's the one I installed manually? My laptop is stored away at the moment.