Disabling Intel UHD Graphics Drivers to Use only Nvidia Card

[Miguel_Queiroz]

Context: I have a HP Zbook Studio G7 laptop. It came with its own OEM Win10 Pro but, I wanted to install my own licensed Win10 Enterprise. As such I formatted the hard drive and then I had to reinstall all the drivers, software, etc..

Situation: When I went to the HP website to download the drivers, I noticed there were 3 Graphics drivers in the list but, because the Laptop came with a Nvidia card, I thought the other Intel HD drivers were for when the laptop came with a different card so, initially I only installed the Nvidia ones. After installing all drivers, I noticed in Device Manager that there was a driver missing for “Intel High Definition Audio”. I Googled it and found the solution: the Intel Audio Driver was included in the Intel UHD Graphics Drivers.

Problem: Upon installing the Intel UHD drivers, my screen became instantly dimmer. Colors were not as rich and less brightness too. When I tried to access Nvidia Control Panel, only 3D Settings are available. The rest was gone. Also in Windows Advanced Display Settings, I saw that the display was connected to the Intel Integrated Graphics.

Wrong Solution: I went to Device Manager and disabled the Intel UHD card. now the display resolution was way lower. In the Display Properties (Windows) “Scale and Layout” had gone from 250% to 300% for some reason. I restored to 250%. When I tried to access the Nvidia Control Panel, I got an error message: “You are not currently using a display attached to an NVIDIA GPU”. I went to Windows Advanced Display Settings and saw that the display was “Connected to Microsoft Basic Display Driver”. Apparently, disabling Intel Graphics in Control Panel, doesn’t put Nvidia in control. You have to do that in BIOS.

Correct Solution: I entered the BIOS and navigated to Advanced > Built-In Device Options > Graphics and changed the setting from “Auto” to “Discrete Graphics (Nvidia, basically). Upon booting Windows I noticed the display had now a reddish tint and was even darker... But the Nvidia Control Panel had all the options back and in Device Manager, Intel Graphics was indeed gone. Finally I found out what the red/warm tint was all about: I opened Windows Display Settings and set Night Light Off. Then navigated to “Night Light Settings” and clicked “Turn it Off”. Warm red tint gone and now my Laptop uses Nvidia for everything.

Question: Obviously I'm posting here mostly to help others with a solution for this because I couldn't find anywhere an answer for the red tint, which was a problem when switching to the Nvidia card in BIOS. However because I could be wrong and this could not be the ideal solution, I am posting here also to know if this is the best solution or if there's a better one. Is there?

Thanks,
Miguel