Microsoft releases KB 4057291 to fix a buggy Radeon video driver that it automatically installed last month

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If you are running Windows 10 and have Automatic Update turned on, and you have an older Radeon video card, you probably got hit. The new patch revers
[See the full post at: Microsoft releases KB 4057291 to fix a buggy Radeon video driver that it automatically installed last month]

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I have had ATI cards since about 2006, after nVidia never could stabilize Windows Vista drivers for my $1K+ workstation graphics card. Up to early this year I had been using a relatively inexpensive Radeon HD 7850, which was quite decent.

However, this year I switched back to nVidia (a Quadro P2000 workstation card) because AMD/ATI has taken their display driver development down some wrong roads. AMD/ATI has been removing features for existing hardware, for example, and they finally got to one (per monitor calibration) that I couldn’t live without.

Knowing what I have learned lately about AMD/ATI’s driver development, I’d hesitate to blame Microsoft for a Radeon driver mess at this point.

In any case, as a developer of graphics software myself, I’d recommend that users NEVER install WHQL display drivers from Microsoft, but instead visit the web site of the maker of your GPU (e.g., nVidia, ATI/AMD, or Intel) and manage the updates of your own display drivers carefully yourself.

Every maker has a good web presence for doing so. And much like the discussions here at AskWoody about regular Windows Update, I’d suggest not just blindly updating to the latest driver release when it first comes out. Wait a while after and do some online research. Gamers and serious computer users alike care about whether their software/system crashes, and if a bum driver release is made the grumbling does get out there. Oh, and don’t expect a driver update to radically – or even noticeably – improve your display performance. If you like the way your system works, consider this advice: If it works, don’t fix it.

FYI the number of customer support requests we get that are resolved by advising users to update their display driver from the web site of the maker of their GPU is greater than all other issues combined.

-Noel

4 users thanked author for this post.

rc primak, LH, HiFlyer, Seff

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I couldn’t agree more with all your points, Noel. As a home user and predominantly a gamer, I follow a lot of forums and often read performance complaints from players who have rushed to install the latest drivers when their previous ones were working just fine (just like they rushed to upgrade to Windows 10 purely because it was the shiny new toy and supposedly free). I have always followed the maxim “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” where drivers are concerned – and not just in relation to graphics cards, but in relation for example to bios updates as well as the OS too!

It’s especially important not to rely on the latest drivers if you’re playing older games. The same consideration applies to the OS, most changes in new driver updates are designed with Windows 10 in mind, it’s unlikely that you’ll derive the same benefit from updating drivers if you’re using Windows 7 or 8.1. On average my graphics drivers are probably a year or two old, and I never update them without good cause, while I scarcely if ever update audio drivers or install bios/other firmware updates as I’ve never encountered a good enough reason to do so.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Noel Carboni

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Seff wrote:

most changes in new driver updates are designed with Windows 10 in mind, it’s unlikely that you’ll derive the same benefit from updating drivers if you’re using Windows 7 or 8.1.

Most driver releases are usually dedicated to issues with newest games – these are rather OS independent. Then again – NVIDIA usually states explicitly which games are affected, so if you’re not playing any of them, there’s no rush to install the new driver.

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I have a Windows 10 home machine now running version 1709 (the recent “builder” update) build 16299.25. My display is a 23” diagonal AMD Radeon 5570 that came with the computer built several years ago by the Medford, Oregon Cyber Center, an excellent shop, when Windows 10 was new. As you know, Windows updated the driver a couple days ago.

Your article suggest a KB fix for older displays, but mine has a higher number, so should be relatively new. Is this wrong?

Device Manager now reports the driver is 15.201.1151.1008.

The result for me was that the display was about 5% too much for the screen, so the icons around the edge were not visible. I fixed this by going into the AMD Catalyst Control Center and scaling down 5%. I left the resolution at the default 1920 x 1080 P. Now everything is visible, but fuzzy. I need to regain native resolution, and keep the display on the screen.

I regret ignoring Woody’s advice years ago to avoid automatic updates, but I don’t like to spend a lot of time managing my computer. This approach finally came around to bite me.

Can you suggest a fix?

Does KB 4057291 fix this for a 5000 series card and driver?

I suppose I could uninstall the MS update, but that sounds risky, and may not even be possible. The AMD website is not much help either. I could try Cyber Center, but then I would have to pack up the whole thing and drive down the mountain in the snow and leave it with them for a few days. Besides, I don’t know if they can even help.

Do you know if MS is aware that this problem also affects newer displays, and plans to fix it? Or are we on our own?

Thank You for your attention,
John A.

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John A, instead of adjusting this from the software side, which has resulted in a fuzzy display because of recalculating the image — and probably affecting response speed — try adjusting the monitor itself.

Admittedly, I have made an assumption this 23″ monitor is a stand alone unit. These usually have a native settings menu navigated by physical push-buttons located along the lower right-hand edge of the display screen. Adjusting the image size, width and height, in this menu will not force the graphics chipset unnecessary calculations.

I may be showing the age of my hardware. If new tech has passed me by, apologies. Hope this helps.

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Yeah, I’m really surprised that a Windows hardware driver automatic update, especially a display driver, might be less than ideal. /not

The whole device driver update thing in Win 10 is a massive clusterbleep and really annoying. There should just be an optional opt-out setting in Windows Update to stop offering, downloading, and installing hardware drivers, period. For that matter hardware driver automatic updating should be opt-in. You can’t even opt out and make it stick. Ridiculous.

The wushowhide dance to block a dozen of these on each PC each time you update gets really old, and then a month later, back they are again. Non-techies aren’t gonna bother with wushowhide. And then if one driver update slips through, most of the time (and if you’re lucky), nothing happens. Many of them for chipsets etc. are just placeholders. There are no updates available even from the chipset manufacturer. Stop over-complicating things, MS. Do what you do best, whatever that is, but take it from askwoody, it isn’t device driver updating.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth

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Never a fan of Windows updates handling driver updates. It’s obviously done because of the clueless who don’t know or wanna know how to install much of anything. A least give users back some control who want it.

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Charlie

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Drivers come pre-installed from the OEM, or you do a clean install and know what you are doing.

“We’ve updated you X driver”
The good:
“if you are lucky X still works (the same)”
The bad:
“X isn’t working (so fix it with the proper OEM driver)”
Worse:
“We noticed you re-installed that (old?) OEM driver, so we re-installed the newer driver that doesn’t work”

How it was:
https://manuals.konicaminolta.eu/bizhub-C658-C558-C458-C368-C308-C258-UD/EN/contents/img/IC/C754_MEN540A_01.png

This is windows 10:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachments/1-jpg.130413
Those two options are the same as JUST the check box at the bottom of the first image. Drivers are on AUTO and the dialog is missing vital parts.

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Anyone knows if this works to stop Windows 10 to offer drivers updates?

reg add “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate” /v ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate /t REG_DWORD /d 1

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No, that doesn’t work. I set about 6 other entries and finally got it to work, but I haven’t verified it yet. (maybe this hardware just had NO driver updates from windows after I installed the OEM drivers, plus it was an AMD based system which I work with less often).

Maybe I’ll post it once I do some more testing (hopefully before 1803 obsoletes my work). My new threads tend to get ignored or vanish unfortunately…

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This worked for me on Windows 10 1507 but I don’t know if it’s still working:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceInstall\Restrictions]
“DenyDeviceIDs”=dword:00000001
“DenyDeviceIDsRetroactive”=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceInstall\Restrictions\DenyDeviceIDs]
“1”=”PCI\\VEN_XXXX&DEV_XXXX”

where “PCI\\VEN_XXXX&DEV_XXXX” is the Device id you want to block

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Was testing on 1709 home, ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate definitely didn’t work, tried to hide the driver updates in that case (wushowhide) but some of the drivers refused to be hidden (were shown as already hidden and also currently “being installed”. After 7 runs of wushowhide and setting ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate it hid 5 drivers and installed one wireless driver update (wifi was not in use on that PC). Installed one trackpad driver (which messed up the mouse) but that was removed and replaced with the latest OEM driver.

List all hardware that is and will ever be connected to your PC by ID to not update, ugh… I count at least ~10 likely candidates on an example PC. Who’s the crazy person with 99% of the vote for windows features who asked microsoft: “I’d like my screen to go blank, my mouse to stop operating normally, and my internet to be out because my wifi doesn’t work — but only sometimes, at random, surprise me”

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I don’t know if this has ANYTHING to do with the problem at all…but…I just bought a NEW Dell laptop. For some reason, it won’t output video to an OLD Sharp TV that I was using for a monitor to display info for a class with PowerPoint, etc. My previous laptop, a couple of year old Acer, worked just fine.

I have been on with Dell support for a number of hours, and noticed that one of the things that was “changed” was a Radeon driver. Unfortunately, so far, that hasn’t helped.

If any of you know the answer to MY problem, hearing it would be WAY cool!!

Thank you!

Dave

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Most of the Dells I have had have had a switch (Fn + one of the F-keys) that switched between laptop screen only, external monitor only, or both. I know it’s probably a stupid question (obvious answer), but have you tried that?

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If you’re getting no video at all to the Sharp TV, and nothing changed with the TV’s setup, then PKCano’s answer has to be the correct one. I have often seen this exact solution to the problem you have described. The only thing that has changed has been that you now have a different laptop. Therefore, the problem has to be in the laptop.

What kind of video input does the TV have? Chances are there are no smarts incorporated in the TV’s video input; if there are, then there is the possibility that the problem could be caused by something in the TV. But that is very unlikely, in my opinion. If the TV’s video input is Red-White-Yellow (i.e. RCA or “composite”), then there are no smarts in the video input, it’s just a basic input. Even with HDMI, I don’t think the TV could be causing the problem. With HDMI, if anything, plugging in the HDMI cable should make the video switch to the TV. It wouldn’t cause the TV not to work as the monitor. (With my TV, as soon as I plug in the HDMI cable, the TV automatically switches to the laptop as its video source.)

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Yes, the TV can cause a problem. On my new Sony TV, my old Lacie Lacinema HD Classic with HDMI connection doesn’t work. It restarts in and endless loop, and that does not happend on any other TV I have tried. I know it’s not a laptop, but it’s the proof there can be some kind of incompatibility.

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So, these settings no longer work?:

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/disable-automatic-driver-downloads-on-windows-10

https://www.howtogeek.com/302595/how-to-stop-windows-10-from-automatically-updating-hardware-drivers/

“Note that your hardware drivers may still be updated by Windows Update in some situations. Driver updates may be bundled with security updates or feature updates, according to Microsoft’s documentation. (1)”

That last paragraph may explain why sometimes it appears the settings are ignored. This doesn’t solve the problem of unwanted Microsoft driver updates, but it offers the official explanation of why and when there may be an override.

(1) Exclude drivers from Quality Updates

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/waas-configure-wufb#exclude-drivers-from-quality-updates

-- rc primak

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