But if the problem continues and Intel can't fix it, that will be my eventually fallback work-around. I do see that there is now an option to 'hide forever' to stop D&SA for scanning the graphics drivers, while still updating networking and others, but this isn't as good, because I do want it to keep the graphics drivers up to date too, just limited to properly registered drivers that don't trigger MS to downgrade them.

This is a communication failure between Intel and Microsoft, and it's Intel's responsibility to fix it and ensure that you only push WHQL drivers that are also registered with MS (like Nvidia does), or at least give us an option in D&SA to only use those drivers, in case some users want to use the bleeding edge version. The problem is that Windows Update doesn't know that the version installed by Intel D&SA is actually an authorized, approved WHQL-certified driver. I have already tried the recommendations to reinstall D&SA, to no avail. I see multiple posts here in the forum by other users with the same problem, none of them solved. Either, I have to continually disable and manually reject each and every D&SA display adapter update (this is my current work-around) or deal with Intel updating, then let Windows Update downgrade back to an older version that night, then the next day Intel D&SA updates to the latest version, then Windows Update downgrades, etc. It's a serious bug, a major hassle, and the bane of my computing work.

Intel support driver assistant