Several years ago when running Win7 Pro on an HP-HDX18t laptop, the hardware vendor produced a defective graphics driver which fried the gpu. I got around that by disabling the graphics driver and not running any programs that needed it; it's still a pretty fast machine. I somehow got the laptop to work mostly the same way after up[down]grading to Win10 over a year ago (notably without Bluetooth, either, but that I can ignore), and, after a previous experience with what I am asking about here, turned off "automatically download manufacturers' apps ..." Until now that setting seemed to prevent Windows Update from touching the graphics driver, but I believe the Creators Update which M$ imposed today ignored it and enabled the gpu anyway: the machine powers itself down without notice after clicking on NEXT on the new Privacy Settings screen -- the symptom that would result from trying to use the gpu.
I managed to restore Win10 to the previous version, but would like to know how to prevent any possible future M$ updates -- or at least CREATORS UPDATE -- from trying to re-enable, reinstall, or otherwise use the graphics driver. I was not able to access Safe Mode from Creators Update as it shut down the machine just like the normal mode.
