Windows 10 Build 9879: Fix black screen after boot on Surface Pro 2

As you will know from my previous blog post, Windows 10 Build 9879 isn’t free of various bugs, especially when it comes to hardware and that’s to be expected given that the various builds being seeded out to the insiders program are very much still in Alpha code stages.

Another issue that cropped up in this build seemed to affect my Surface Pro 2 this time where after the Windows boot logo I would be presented with a black screen and nothing more. This issue first cropped up in Build 9860 but appears to have gotten worse in Build 9879.

After numerous hard shut downs of the device the issue would eventually go away until the next reboot, almost every time.

The cause? The Intel HD Graphics drivers supplied in the July 2014 Surface Pro 2 driver pack have a problem with Build 9879 where some of the driver components will fail to start at times.

Unfortunately Microsoft have not issued a newer pack for the Surface Pro 2 drivers, and the latest Intel releases will error out upon running setup.exe However, there is an easy way to get these to install and fix the issue.

For this I downloaded the August drivers Intel HD Graphics, although newer ones will probably work too.  You can grab these here and I recommend you download the ZIP package.

Installation

  1. Open Device Manager and select the Intel HD Graphics device
  2. Right click and select “Update Driver Software”
  3. Select “Browse my computer for driver software”
  4. Select “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer”
  5. Select “Have Disk”
  6. Select the .INF file from the extracted Intel driver ZIP package which can be found in the Graphics folder e.g  C:win64_153330Graphicskit64ib.inf
  7. The driver should install from the supplied .INF file

Once this has completed you can go ahead and run the Intel setup to install the Display Audio and software.

The result? No more black screens after boot on the Surface Pro 2 🙂

Enjoy!

2 Replies to “Windows 10 Build 9879: Fix black screen after boot on Surface Pro 2”

  1. Thank you. I have the same problem with my Surface Pro 2. Have Windows 10 installed. Black screen after ‘restart and update’. Always take 3-4 goes to start up properly. Will try the above.

  2. This issue was getting rather severe on my Surface Pro 2, would often require 5-7 restarts before it booted normally. Installed the driver you linked and all seems fine. Thanks.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.