Intel GPU/Audio services Aspire A515-54G

Puraw

Hi,

Unable to get answers from Acer support in my country I am posting this here:

My laptop: Aspire A515-54G (4 months old) with the original W10 OS and Acer's drivers, updated BIOS to 1.17 and drivers (yesterday).

I keep the following 2 services in W10 disabled that were set to automatic start by ACER:

gfxCUIService2.0.0.0, Service for Intel(R) HD Graphics Control Panel, while I have UHD GCP (working OK) not HD GCP.

IntelAudioService: I have a Realtek Audio board/speakers and Intel(R) Display Audio drivers that are all working OK.

Two questions: Why are the two above services installed on my system and set to automatic without any of the apps present?

A related question is that there was no UHD GCP installed when I purchased my laptop in February (in the Philippines), only the Nvidia Control Panel version 8.1.956.0, so I downloaded Intel UHD GCP version 3..0.0, from the Microsoft Store, my Intel UHD GPU driver version is 26.20.100  with Vulcan version 1.1.103 and seem to run OK (screen is set on maximum brightness but very dim when working outside!). Only issue is after every boot I get a low level Event ID 2 that MEIx64 refers to an apps that is not installed.

Would appreciate some information on these issues.

Thanks

aphanic

I can't speak for what the laptop originally had because my sub-model came without an OS, but I have the following related services:



The name displayed doesn't matter whether we have UHD or HD graphics engines, it seems to be the same for everyone. Their function is probably to interact with the hardware, because they're running as SYSTEM, the Graphics Command Center being run at the user's privilege level.

My Vulkan version is 1.2.142 (driver 0.402.144) but it's probably because I'm running on newer drivers. Since I'm in 2004 I switched to the WDDM2.7 from Intel and yet they ship with Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling support Off, even though there were drivers with it supported when 2004 was in preview still.

As for the Intel audio service, that's because the Realtek ALC255 we have is routed through Intel's Smart Sound Technology (you'll find at least an item by that name in the System category of the Device Manager).

As for MEI, the Management Engine Interface, there may be missing drivers or apps (it is comprised of both); but it's not important for regular users. Besides, Acer seems NOT to provide upgrades for the MEI firmware code and leaves it vulnerable in BIOS upgrades.

I have uploaded all of the drivers I'm using in my A515-54G here, but there may be differences (my touchpad for example is made by Synaptics and not Elan or ALPS): https://mega.nz/file/ZN0AUIoR#EVMWpgQPOgsRXpzzWAEElgyIBYOL9eA7GesXaBbe62Y