HD Graphics 4600 screen flickering error

[DBerg5]

Hello,

since the old thread disappeared rather quickly, I will open a new one here.

I have horizontal lines occasionally popping up as soon as something is moving on screen.

It's not really a flickering, they just appear for 1 or 2 seconds and then disappear.

I am not able to make an actual screenshot of it, because it seems the error does only show on screen.

I manipulated a screenshot to show how it looks like:

This can happen inside a video window, but it doesn't happen when it is playing, but when it is paused and the overlay of the player pops up,

then a black or sometimes white line (1 or 2 pixels wide) pops up, as long as the overlay is shown.

This happens in many different applications, Photoshop, Firefox, VLC Player, ACDSee or the Windows Explorer.

Sometimes its only on a picture on a website or a drop-down menu in some program.

Only games seem to be immune to this, I tried a few which did not show any error.

The thing is, I had this on 2 quite different notebooks.

On an MSI-CR61 with a Pentium 3550M + HD Graphics, and now on a Lenovo Thinkpad Edge E540 with a Core i5 + HD Graphics 4600.

Both running on a fully patched Windows 7 x64 SP1 + latest drivers.

I tried out a Linux Boot CD on both systems, on both machines the error is not present under Linux.

Only under Windows 7 x64 SP1. Which makes me think that it's not a faulty screen

I connected the notebook to an external monitor via HDMI, and I am not able to reproduce the error on that.

On the MSI-Notebook I tried the following versions of the Intel Driver: v.15.36.7.64.3960 and v.15.36.3.64.3907

and the one before that, but I can't find out the exact version now.

On the Lenovo Thinkpad I only tried the latest v.15.36.7.64.3960.

Any ideas?

Greetings,

Daniel

[Jose_H_Intel1]

Hello Daniel, did you test the drivers provided by the http://www.intel.com/support/oems.htm system manufacturer?

Can you try to reproduce it in safe mode or after a clean boot/diagnostic startup?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/start-computer-safe-mode# start-computer-safe-mode=windows-7 Start your computer in safe mode - Windows Help

http://support.microsoft.com/KB/929135 How to perform a clean boot in Windows

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/using-system-configuration# 1TC=windows-7 Using System Configuration (msconfig) - Windows Help

[DBerg5]

I did not test the drivers Lenovo provides, mostly because they seem petty old.

Latest version there is 9.18.10.3272 from 11/6/2013.

Why are there different drivers for this one graphics chip anyway?

I get why when it comes to Multi-GPU notebooks, like Intel+Nvidia, but for pure Onboard graphics?

I did not try safe mode yet, but I will do that and report the results here.

Thanks,

Daniel

[DBerg5]

I started in safe mode now, looks like the error does not appear then.

Since in safe mode the Aero desktop design was deactivated, I thought I'd try to deactivate just that under a normal boot.

Seems to have worked. I have a very ugly looking Windows now, but no more flickering.

How am I able to tell now if this is a driver issue, or an error by some 3rd-party program?

Thanks,

Daniel

[DBerg5]

Does nobody have any advice for me on this issue?

[Filip_Z_Intel]

The easiest solution to check that is by disabling/removing graphics driver

[DBerg5]

I now tried the driver Lenovo provides, it gives me the exact same error.

When I deinstall the Intel driver and use the standard vga driver windows provides, the error does not appear.

Is anyone else here able to reproduce this error?

[Jose_H_Intel1]

I would install the driver again and try a clean boot as suggested above. This way you can try to determine if a conflict with a third party application is causing the issue.

If you disable all applications from startup and the issue does not happen, try enabling one application at a time to see which one triggers the issue.

[DBerg5]

I just installed the new driver v15.36.14.64.4080.

After a bit of testing it seems that the error does not show anymore.

To whoever fixed it, thank you!

Also thanks to everyone else here for all the advice.

Greetings,

Daniel