Premiere Elements 11 start up error - Windows 7, 64 bit

Question

Premiere Elements 11 was working fine until 1 week ago.  Now I get an error on start up that says "Display Driver Intel HD Graphics is out of date. . . ". Then it loads very slowly. Once loaded, Premiere does not show the video though appears to be running it.  I checked the Display Driver and it is up to date - latest version. I "restored" PC back to a date when Premiere was working well to no avail.  I then unintstalled and re-installed Premiere 11 and still get the error. I have run diagnositics on the PC - no problems reported with display or any other function.  I also have Premiere 9 and tried it - it runs just fine - no display problems at all.  Where should I look next? Any suggestions?

Answer 1

In cases, such as these, I try to look for variables, in hopes of explaining the changes.
As most users have their OS Updates set to fully automatic, those are installed, fairly frequently (depending on OS, and version), and usually without any knowledge of the user.
However, the failures of video drivers seem to come after several OS Updates have been issued. MS just issued many for XP-Pro and Win7 (do not know about Win8), and we then see an increase in video driver issues. For users who employ their particular Adobe programs often, most video driver issues come immediately after Windows Updates (though not ALL Windows Updates).
I have all of my OS Updates set to notify me of availability, and then I can manually download, and manually install what I want. Taking my nVidia Quadro FX-4500 as one example, the only times that I have needed to update its video driver, have come immediately after Windows Updates - and I mean immediately. As I download and install my Windows Updates manually, I am ready for the possibility of video driver issues - most times, things work just fine afterwards, but not always. When some changes occur with the Windows Updates, a video driver update has, almost always, fixed them.
Why does this happen? I cannot tell you, but then not all Windows Updates are created equally, such as the recent one, that broke WMV display.
Do the video card/chip mfgrs. think that there is a need to update the video drivers? Observing AMD/ATI, and especially nVidia, it appears so, with a new driver coming about once per month. There ARE often features that get added, or tweaked, and especially when the card/chip is used in extreme gaming, but why every month? I would assert that it is to accompany changes in the OS with the Windows Updates, but we will need an engineer from nVidia to comment directly. As an aside, Matrox is a great card/chip mfgr. Their cards were cutting edge, and were the first to allow for multiple monitors. However, their concentration was on business machines, and not so much on Adobe products. They were slow to update their drivers, and Adobe users were often left out in the cold, for up to 6 mos. Matrox cards fell out of favor, due to the lack of video driver updates, with Adobe users. Business users, who only needed to use spreadsheets over 4 monitors, or were using software, that did not need to interface so closely with the video driver, were unaffected - not so for those in the 3D, or video-editing community.
If one were to try to draw coorelations between Windows Updates and video driver compatibility, I think that they could look to this, and a few other Adobe product forums for data. Now, most computer users do not have programs, that interface with the video driver much at all. They would never notice anything amiss. However, if one is an extreme gamer, or they work with programs, such as heavy-duty 3D, CAD *, or several Adobe products, like Premiere Elements & Pro, After Effects, Photoshop (PsE ?) or Encore, they encounter problems with video display, and often immediately after a Windows Update. In nearly every case, updating the video driver fixes things. Circumstantial evidence? Sure, but it is so common, as to almost be a "given."
Why does one not see so many video driver issues on a Mac? The video drivers, in most cases, ARE updated, when one updates their OS, as the OS updates, also update the video driver. The exceptions come from some of the recent nVidia CUDA cards, for the Mac, that will usually require a CUDA driver update - and that fixes things.
Just some observations,
Hunt
* Most serious CAD applications will require a special CAD video driver, and not the general ones that most folk use. In the CAD community, the CAD drivers are also released quite often, to fix changes in the OS.