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Sorry for the delay in response. I was working some heavy overtime last week (among other things). However, now that college has started back up, I'll have a lot more free time (if that makes any sense).
jeromiec83223024 wrote:
Okay, it looks like Dell doesn't have newer Win10 drivers, but these Intel ones match your chipset:
Sadly, that's an old driver. The latest one (and the one I currently have installed) is this one:
Download Intel® HD Graphics Driver for Windows® 7*, 8.1*, 10 (3rd Gen & BYT)
jeromiec83223024 wrote:
here's also a BIOS update available for your notebook that might help. It's light on details, but it includes some microcode updates for the processor itself.
Unfortunately, this didn't help either. I appreciate your effort in finding all this stuff for me though. 
jeromiec83223024 wrote:
Intel does seem to be updating the drivers pretty regularly on Win10 still -- patches seem to be landing every few weeks. Alternatively, if you don't want to wait, you could consider moving back to Windows 8.1 if things were working well for you there.
You mean the auto-updates? I turned those off via the Group Policy Editor, and used the Windows Show/Hide updates program to install Windows only updates. I only install verified drivers from either Dell or Intel's website directly as I've had bad experiences with the generic hardware drivers pushed by Windows Update (such as loss of manufacture's driver customizations [i.e Waves Maxx Audio Pluggin for the Realtek audio driver], malfunctioning/crashing of the drivers, and even an incorrect driver installed!!). And that was on a Windows 7 system. I fear the damage that could be done on my Windows 10 system.
As far as switching back to Windows 8.1 goes, I unfortunately can't do that. I bought this computer from Dell with Windows 10 pre-installed. The key on the sticker on the bottom of my laptop is for Windows 10 only. I don't have a Windows 8 key. (I have Windows 7 keys, but unfortunately, nobody makes drivers for that operating system any more 
).
jeromiec83223024 wrote:
As an aside, if your machine is under warranty with Dell still, they're really the right contact for the graphics issue. They buy the chips from Intel, but the relationship is probably such that Dell is really on the hook for direct consumer support for their laptops, which might explain part of that perfunctory support experience you saw earlier.
While you might have better luck talking to Dell, calling into tech support tends to just raise my blood pressure.
You and me both. Dell's tech support makes Intel's look like the epitome of perfection (having contacted Dell prior to this post, I can expect my call to go something like this). However, I'll open another ticket later this week. I'll try email this time so I can include a link to this forum so they can see the work we've already done (providing they actually read it).
jeromiec83223024 wrote:
There's the remote possibility that something is going on with the underlying hardware on that machine, but my expectation is that you'd then see that across other hardware accelerated software (high-end desktop games, maybe your browser if you're looking at WebGL content or something).
All ready had a computer technician check out my hardware (first time I contacted Dell). It came back clean.
jeromiec83223024 wrote:
I'm not seeing anything in my Google searches indicating that other people are complaining about this problem, so I'm not holding out a lot of hope that this is a situation where there are a flood of complaints coming into the Dell support line.
Well, I had more success. I actually found someone else who's been having the same problem as me. Get this, his computer uses the exact same driver as mine! Although we have different processors, we do indeed have the exact same graphics cards. You can read more about this here (uh...just ignore the anti-Adobe rants at the end 
😞
Shockwave Flash crash - Audio and Video
So as you can see, this problem may be common among people who have my exact graphics card (it seems to be used mainly on "low end" systems with such processors as Atom, Pentium, Celeron, etc.)
They say miracles don't happen in these modern times. Yet one just did as Dell Technical support actually helped solve my issue (I hope). Apparently, the problem was with Dell Foundation Services. And I'm not entirely sure what Dell Foundation Service does, but according to Dell it helps with "technical support functions". However, according to forum posts, it apparently also has functions that deal with hard drive encryption. Whatever it does, I do know one thing about it..........it also crashes display adapters. Anyways, he recommended I check to make sure I have the latest Dell Foundation Service installed at least once a month, and while I'm there; update any other drivers on my system as well. Decent advice I guess.
Anyways, I turned Hardware Acceleration back on; and left my computer running for around three hours with a resource intensive Flash game running in the background. When I checked on my computer after my college class, it still had not crashed and was running great. So I'm assuming the problem is solved for now.
jeromiec83223024 wrote:
Yeah, with the netbooks and low-power devices, GPU acceleration is really crucial to being able to play back H.264 video. It was the market shift towards inexpensive low-end and/or low-power hardware that was a big driver in taking on hardware GPU support. It's much more difficult for us to support, and Flash ultimately gets the blame when things go poorly, as people conflate hardware driver issues with Flash issues. It's totally understandable -- people just want it to work and they don't care about the internals -- but It's one of those situations where we can't guarantee that things will work perfectly -- we're totally dependent on the underlying systems, and when encoding problems are involved, the hardware is less forgiving.
It gets even worse when the problem is caused by Dell crapware. That stuff is the least forgiving of all.
jeromiec83223024 wrote:
For the guy in that other thread, if things like Youtube (which is all HTML5 video at this point) are automatically throttling down to 144P, they're detecting and adapting to low throughput from them to the client. It's quite possible that the guy has 38Mbps to his ISP, but is hitting something slow along the route from his ISP to the YouTube end-point that he's connecting to, or he has 38Mbps when sitting right next to his wireless router, but not in the dead spot in his other room, his neighbor has a '90s-era 5Ghz frequency-hopping spread spectrum cordless phone, he's under a flight path, etc, etc... there are a ton of unpredictable variables, but it sounds network-related.
Well, that's probably true as for why he's getting 144p. However, it doesn't explain the crashes. So what I'll probably do is recommend he try the "Dell Tech Support Foolproof Plan of Solving Every Issue Your Computer Might Have". And by the I mean having him throw all his manufacturer's driver software at his computer and see if any of them stick.
jeromiec83223024 wrote:
Fortunately, my engineer that has the engineering relationship with folks at Intel is back today, so I've asked her to forward this over to our counterparts to see if we can get a little traction there.
I really appreciate this. However, this time Intel was actually innocent. It was Dell's fault (which I suppose at this point in time should surprise nobody). But I'm glad to see that Adobe really cares about its customers.
jeromiec83223024 wrote:
Thanks again for the patience in working through this.
No, thank YOU for helping me through this. You've been nothing shy of helpful throughout this whole ordeal. I must say, this is the most pleasant customer support experience I've had in literally years! If I could give your overall support a numerical rating it would EASILY be an 11/10. HUGE thank you for all the help you have provided. I must say, this has indeed changed my perspective on Flash. Sure I complained about it before, called it a nightmare, wished all other websites would use HTML5; but now I see Adobe actually puts work and effort into developing it. And as such is the case, I've forced YouTube to play all my videos utilizing Adobe Flash now. Eventually, I suppose YouTube will completely drop support for Flash; but you can bet that from now on, I'll be watching all my videos in Flash until the day that happens.
Again, huge thanks!
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