In my last article, I wrote about the issues I was having on my SLS1 running Windows 10 ESU with Edge Dev not running if I let it update past version 150 to 151 or later. Simple fix, just downgrade it to 150. As these things go, however, when the OS version of Edge updated to 151, I had the same problem and I found downgrading it, while doable, is no piece of cake. I was able to do it and it worked, but this is no way to run going forward. Coincidentally, I found that M365 Copilot no longer ran either. Houston, we have a problem!
I started at the Event Viewer looking at the Application logs and I noticed I got an error in one of the NVidia drivers – this machine is a Surface Laptop Studio, version 1 and it has an NVidia chipset in it. Maybe I have the culprit here!
I decided to install a full backup from several months ago thinking that would get things going again…WRONG! Edge worked until I let it update, then it quit, M365 Copilot was also MIA with the same errors in nViewH64.dll. Off to the NVidia site to get the latest drivers to see if that helps. BINGO! Edge 151 runs, Edge Dev 152 runs, and M365 Copilot runs, so something clobbered the drivers and it was some time ago since they were bad after the backup restore.
This should be the end of the story but sadly, it isn’t. On Tuesday of this week (“Patch Tuesday”), there were two updates to install. No problem (or so I thought), I installed them only to find that neither version of Edge nor the M365 Copilot would run again! Fired up the Event Viewer and sure enough, NVidia errors again. Re-installed the NVidia driver package and I’m back in business. This likely means I’ll have to do this after every Windows Update I install until I finally get around to updating the machine to Windows 11.
The other issue I wrote about is the Microsoft (not M365) Copilot that won’t start. Replacing the video drivers did not help that issue. Furthermore, I have an older Surface Pro 6 also still running Windows 10 ESU and I have exactly the same issue there as well, so this is something in Copilot itself. Since it runs fine on a Windows 11 machine I have here, I very much doubt the problem will be addressed. Fortunately, it has a stay resident on termination feature that places an icon in the system tray that WILL launch it.
