There are numerous complaints on popular hardware forums from users who own a dual NVIDIA / Intel GPU configuration, who are encountering Metro app crashes under the NVIDIA beta driver 296.17 for Windows 8. For those of you who are experiencing the issue, there is a workaround that you can try and see if Metro apps are still crashing or not.
While there are many users who keep a dual operating system on their PC to have a backup, there are some who took a chance and installed Windows 8 Consumer Preview. You can probably imagine that the latter are also the most frustrated and unhappy users, as they have nothing to turn to when Metro apps crash under the NVIDIA beta driver 296.17 in Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
From what I noticed, not all Metro apps crash in Windows 8 if you have the NVIDIA beta driver 296.17 installed. This happens very often when trying to run Metro apps which have not been developed by Microsoft or are integrated by default in Windows 8 Consumer Preview. You can recognize the issues if your screen instantly goes black once you open a Metro app and after a short while you are back to the Windows 8 log-on screen.
Like I said, below you can read about a workaround for the issue. Credits for the guide go to istartedsomething, who experienced the same issue.
Step 1: Check the NVIDIA beta driver version that you currently have installed in Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
Step 2: Go to the NVIDIA control panel and open the ‘Manage 3D settings’ menu. Here you would normally select which is the main and preferred GPU, the Intel graphics or the NVIDIA card. Our goal is to select the integrated GPU not the dedicated one. Once you are done with your selection, apply the changes and then restart your computer so that the new settings can be used.
Step 3: When you log back to Windows 8, go to the ‘Device manager’ and open the “Display adapters”. Here you should disable the dedicated NVIDIA graphics card so that Metro apps will not crash under the NVIDIA beta driver 296.17 in Windows 8. Apparently, your screen could go black once you apply the setting so you should try again if at first you don’t succeed.
Step 4: Go to the Windows 8 Start Screen and try to run a Metro app. If the trick worked, Metro apps should not crash anymore under the NVIDIA beta driver from Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
Please note that this workaround is only temporary, as this means that your computer will act like any other one that does not have a dedicated GPU. As such, this means that Windows 8 may not seem that snappy or you could see some of its functions disabled due to the fact that they require serious power, like the NVIDIA graphics adapter.
Everyone hopes that it will not take that long for NVIDIA to fix the bug which causes metro apps to crash under the NVIDIA beta driver 296.17 in Windows 8.
