Display Driver has suddenly defaulted to Microsoft Basic Graphics Driver

Anonymous
2017-11-26T08:52:52+00:00

Hi All

My 7 year old Dell XPS Studio laptop, which has been running Win 10 nicely for the last couple of years, has now changed my ATi Radeon HD 3560 driver to the Microsoft Basic Graphics Driver, presumably after a Win update.

Consequently, my screen resolution is not correct. There is no option of changing the screen resolution back to the previous setting, as it is no longer there.

I now can't revert back to the previous graphics driver (no rollback option, no system restore option, and no way of downloading the discontinued Ati drivers)

I have tried uninstalling the display driver through Device Manager and scanning for hardware changes, but no luck there.

Windows update says I have the latest driver.

Uninstalling the previous windows update has no effect either.

The display was running correctly previously , but the basic Microsoft driver has now taken over.

Would anyone have any ideas, short of reinstalling Windows again?

Thank You

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Devices and drivers

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-11-30T13:21:52+00:00

    Not all of us are as computer Saavy as others.... Not all of us knew this.. and for many of us this just happened!

    Bottom line.. Microsoft broke it Microsoft should fix it!

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-11-30T13:02:02+00:00

    I upgraded to v.1709 last night.

    My AMD card is years old and not supported on Windows 10, but the last driver from AMD still works (for now.)

    To avoid having my working driver replaced, I used Microsoft's driver update troubleshooter.

    As a result, I'm still on the 'old' driver and my monitor works perfectly.

    The information describing this is public knowledge that has been available for years.

    But some people think everyone else is responsible for their troubles.

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  3. Neil D 34,340 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2017-11-30T12:45:56+00:00

    Hi Anne,

    Yes the Display adapter is the video card, or graphics. You can see that in Device Manager. Right click Start and select Device Manager in the list and expand Display adapter.

    To try and disable driver updates you need to open the old Control Panel. Type control in windows search and Control Panel should be the top result. Select it and you should see the old Control Panel. Select System and then Advanced system settings in the left hand pane. This may bring up the User Control asking if you wish to allow the action, you need to select yes. Select the Hardware tab and then Device Installation Settings, then select No to stop driver updates.

    Hope that covers it for you.

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-11-30T12:06:38+00:00

    I have not tried that yet... Also not sure how to disable the driver update... I looked and was unable to find that option.

    I am self taught and what takes some only a few minutes to fix or figure out takes me days... 

    How do you know what video card is on your computer? is that the Display Adapter?

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  5. Anonymous
    2017-11-30T11:40:20+00:00

    Anne, are you able to try a Win 10 repair installation over your current installation?

    It would avoid a full install again, and may revert your display driver back to the original one. You can then disable the driver update as mentioned earlier in this thread to avoid it being replaced.

    Not an ideal solution when you only need to repair one driver, but it may get your screen res back.

    I'm going to do a full install at some point on one of the laptops that lost its AMD driver, just because it will also clear out the clutter too with a fresh installation. 

    If it revives the display driver, which it should, I'll set a restore point or two also, as for some reason my system restore was disabled when my display driver was hijacked.

    Although my laptop is 7 years old and was designed for Win 7 at the time, it's still well capable of running Win 10, and zips along nicely with a SSD. So don't abandon yours if it is\was running happily under Win 10.

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