How to get external HDMI display working?

Question

I am helping a friend debug a fresh windows install on a laptop and am having trouble getting external monitors working (connected via HDMI). I think this is a Windows driver issue as I booted a live Linux image on the laptop, and verified it produced output over HDMI to the monitor. So there shouldn't be anything wrong with the hardware I'm using.

When I open the device in device manager it shows up as a "Microsoft Basic Display Adapter" (with the driver last updated in 2006) despite having Intel device IDs (PNP ID is PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3185&SUBSYS_1DC21043&REV_06\3&11583659&0&10). I've tried several methods of installing a better graphics driver - using Intel's own software (which gives up saying that it can't find any supported devices) as well as downloading driver packages from ASUS's website for this laptop model and trying to manually load them in device manager. These all fail either saying that "the best driver is already loaded for the device," or, if I try to force loading a specific file, saying that that file doesn't describe a driver that can work with this device. This all doesn't make any sense to me given that the device IDs match...

This is an ASUS VivoBook E410MAB_L410MA running Windows 10 Home. Would appreciate any help, please let me know if other information would be useful

Answer 1

After digging in the graphics drivers fail INF file for a bit, I found an exact match for my device ID but also found what looked like a windows build version requirement in this line

[IntelGfx.NTamd64.10.0...16225]

I’m not sure about the syntax but this kind of reads like a requirement that windows be (at least?) version 10.0 build 16225. My windows version was much older than that, at 10.0.10586 Build 10586 (which came out in 2015). So I decided to try and get windows to update.

Windows update insisted that the system was up to date. So I downloaded and used windows 10 update assistant, which took several hours to go through the process, but worked like a charm. When it finally completed, everything on the laptop, including the external HDMI monitor connection, worked perfectly.

Answer 2

Hi! Let me help you with this issue.

Have you tried a hard reboot?

Turn off the laptop.

Unplug the charger.

Press and hold the Power button for 20–30 seconds.

Plug the charger back in.

Turn the laptop back on.

If it is still the same issue.

Open Device Manager, go to the View tab, and show Hidden devices. Let me know if your Adapter will reappear.

If it does, try to remove it manually.

Expand Display adapters. Right-click the problematic device, which is either NVIDIA Graphics, AMD Radeon Graphics, or Intel Graphics, depending on the video card installed in your PC, and select Uninstall device.

Select the option "Delete the driver software for this device," then click the Uninstall button.

Reboot the computer.