Numerous Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book early adopters have reported the same problem: routine display driver crashes. The display will hang for a while before popping up a cryptic message that the Intel HD Graphics driver “stopped responding and has successfully recovered.” A Microsoft employee today said a newly released driver should “improve the situation.”
Brand new hardware often comes with a few glitches, and even the well-reviewed Microsoft Surface line isn’t an exception. Since early November, 154 different people have complained about their new Surface devices hanging on Microsoft’s answer’s forum.
“What the heck, did they not test the hardware?” exclaimed one user, adding he’s “hopeful that the issues will get fully resolved ASAP as I hate having a 3k laptop collecting dust!”
“Still having this issue several times a day,” said another, almost a month later.
Today, a Microsoft employee named Joe jumped into the thread and announced a fix.
“Hi all, We will be releasing a new driver sometime later today,” he said, adding that “this new driver will improve the situation.” He also made it clear to customers that Microsoft was paying attention to their concerns, something many were complaining about.
Users were happy to finally hear something about the issue from Redmond.
“Joe, what a breath of fresh air it is to see Microsoft responding to these issues!” said one user, after reading the official response. “You guys are very much appreciated!”
Another customer offered to fly to Seattle and help Microsoft fix the problem.
It goes to show what a little bit of old fashioned communication can do to alleviate unhappy customers. Overall, a longterm fix for the crash will go a ways towards making customers happy. No one in the thread has complained about the issue reoccurring after the update, so here’s hoping it’s fixed.
Still, there are other problems that need to be addressed, as mentioned in our recent long-term update of our Surface Pro 4 review. This fix is a step in the right direction, but several more are needed to put the Pro 4 and Book in the state they should’ve been at release.
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