XPS 13 9350 and the Intel 540 black screen of death

Question

I was refurbing a pile of old XPS 13 9350's as they actually run Windows 11. Unfortunately when installing the Intel 6-10 legacy driver the screen just goes BLACK. The laptop is still running. You can hook up another monitor and the lappy is running along just fine. To fix this you can go into device manager and disable the Intel graphics and it will install the microsoft driver. The only real problem is the microsoft driver blinks randomly driving me crazy. Has anyone been able to figure out what the problem is with the Intel (in this case 540) graphics driver? I've updated all the bios and firmware on everything.

Tesla1856 · Answer

Just the usual stuff ... related BIOS option, maybe an different Intel/Microsoft. or even Dell driver suite.

Is the "Windows App" Intel Command Center or the new Intel Graphics Software? I swear they keep just switching back and forth every 5 years or so.

swingbozo · Answer

@Tesla1856​ It just flat goes black when the driver loads. This is unfortunately a fairly common problem with the pre-arc Intel graphics drivers. I also have four of these XPS 13 9350's and it happens to every single one of them. If you do a windows update and it somehow grabs the latest Intel driver, it black screens the minute the driver loads. When you boot it will dell bios you, then black screens. What's even weirder is the computer is actually running just fine. You can hook up another monitor and the computer is running normally. It's just black screened. This is 100% a driver problem. None of the dell drivers work, and none of the intel drivers work either. You have to disable the Intel Irix graphics in device manager (from safe mode, or after hooking up another monitor) for it to come back.

Tesla1856 · Answer

Yes, it's weird.

Yes, I've seen something like this before, but it's usually the AMD-card that gets abandoned (and you can fall back to the Intel).

It's on this Dell list for Windows-11, so it really should work ... somehow.

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000054430/dell-windows-as-a-service-waas-supported-products

Are you sure there is nothing in BIOS, maybe just about video-memory allocation?

Load the Dell Windows-11 driver and lock-it (and/or prevent updates)?

It's gotta be something like that.

You don't mention exact Intel CPU model, but anything with Iris sounds pretty new. I forced Windows-11 onto some older laptops, and even they all work fine.

swingbozo · Answer

@Tesla1856​ Pretty OLD. This is the previous XPS13 9350. I can't believe Dell re-used a dang model number. This is not 'officially' supported for win11 but it actually loads and runs just fine with win11 given you flat disable the Intel video device and use the default 'Microsoft Video Display.'

Tesla1856 · Answer

@swingbozo​ ,   1. Pretty OLD. This is the previous XPS13 9350. I can't believe Dell re-used a dang model number. 2. This is not 'officially' supported for win11 3. but it actually loads and runs just fine with win11 given you flat disable the Intel video device and use the default 'Microsoft Video Display.' 1. Agreed. What's even more unbelievable is I keep falling-for-it in the forums here.    2. Gotcha 3. It's just strange that ... I forced Windows-11 onto some older laptops (many with only Intel-IGP), and they all work fine. However, if you are satisfied with that solution, we'll just leave it at that ... I have no horse in this race.

DELL-ChrisM2 · Answer

The support team did try to differentiate = 2024 XPS 13 9350 2017 XPS 13 9350 (End of Life)

XPS

XPS 13 9350 and the Intel 540 black screen of death

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