Intel HD 4000 driver causing Z500 laptop to power down at login

[Undrako]

This is an issue that started a few months back on my Lenovo Z500 Touch laptop and it's been bothering me greatly.

A few months back my laptop randomly powered down while I was using it. There was no warning or bluescreen, as if the battery was pulled. Naturally I of course tried to power it back on, however as soon as the login screen appeared the same thing would happen. I tried safe mode, which worked fine, so I enabled memory dumps and verifier. Now at the login screen, the screen would glitch showing green horizontal lines over a distorted login screen, then power down.

Eventually I seem to have traced the problem to the Intel HD 4000 driver. I uninstalled it and was able to boot back into Windows normally using Microsoft's basic driver. I then reinstalled Intel's driver, and the laptop worked fine for about a week before the powering down at the login screen started again. I did the same thing and uninstalled Intel's driver in safe mode, booted back into Windows and installed Intel's driver again. The same thing would happen every week where I'd need to boot into safe mode and remove Intel's driver then install it again in, but now when I install the Intel driver the computer shuts down immediately during the install and reboots using Microsoft's basic driver. I've tried numerous times to install it, and either it powers down immediately or I get an error saying my computer doesn't meet the minimum requirements. Really, I've lost track of exactly what I've done.

I've tried the two latest drivers on Intel's site for Intel HD 4000 as well as the drivers on Lenovo's support pages. I've even tried Intel's driver utility which detects which driver is needed and downloads it, though when it installs it and reboots the basic display driver is in use. Attempting to boot into Kali Linux causes a kernel panic and "intel" shows up in a few different places. Though, the very first time I experienced this issue with drivers Kali Linux would kernel panic until I fixed the problem in Windows, then work fine..which is odd I guess.

The laptop works absolutely fine with the basic driver. If I let Windows Update get Intel's driver, the "device connected" sound plays and the laptop powers down.

Currently, my laptop is running the Windows 10 Preview, however, I had the exact same issue with Windows 7 where I would have to reinstall Intel's driver every few days.

I'm assuming there's some hardware issue, but I'd like to know if there's any way I can verify it and if there's anything I can do about it.

DxDiag output: http/pastebin.com/raw.php?i=J7gLuRVW

edit: I tried booting Kali Linux again to photograph the kernel panic, though now it still kernel panics (the caps lock LED is flashing), but the screen is black. Booting into Kali's failsafe mode gets as far as the GNOME/GDM (?) login screen. Between Kali's booting messages and GNOME/GDM loading, the laptop's "LENOVO" boot splash flashes for a second.

edit: I tried installing Windows 8 again (what came installed on the laptop) and this happened during the first boot:

 

[tman1]

Seeing that at the Lenovo screen means it's not a driver issue, but an actual fault with the video processor itself.

 

[Christopher Sadlowski]

Looks like you have hardware failure happening. The video processor may be starting to fail. At which point it'll probably be cheaper (and much easier) to shop around for a new computer. How old is the unit? Unless you actually inspect the motherboard finding hardware faults is extremely difficult, and even with a visual inspection (and with voltage meters and all the other "pro level" tools) it can be difficult o absolutely determine the root cause of hardware malfunctions. But much like doctors we can look at symptoms and infer a diagnosis. Your best bet would be to attempt to back up important data and start shopping for a new computer...it will most likely be cheaper and easier to go that route than trying to fix the issue. Also, depending on the age of the unit ti may not even make sense at all to fix the computer as faster more power efficient hardware is always arriving to the market.