Laptop With HD Graphics? Don't Upgrade To Windows 8 (Yet)

Laptop With HD Graphics? Don't Upgrade To Windows 8 (Yet)

Recorded a 2 hour Windows 8 upgrade walk-through video of one of our Intel I5 series laptops. However, when the upgrade was finished I found an interesting bug in Windows 8 which rendered the PC virtually useless.

The below screen is what we saw once I typed my password into Windows and clicked sign in.

Yes, that’s right a black screen with a mouse cursor. Nothing else.

Currently the Intel HD graphics built into the Intel I3, I5 and I7 series processors (and included with most mainstream laptops in the last two years) produce a black screen after Windows 8 installed due to a bug with older driver software and Windows 8. In our case, this black screen required a driver and a bios update to get Windows 8 working. It’s important before upgrading that you check for any relevant driver, bios or software updates before proceeding with the upgrade.

Some reports indicate that you can work around this problem (if you have a dedicated graphics card) by disabling the Intel HD graphics in the bios of your computer or booting into safe mode and disabling the Intel HD graphics. This may be a bigger problem than you think, though, because Windows 8 has disabled the traditional safe mode by clicking F8 during boot up, and only rarely does holding down Shift + F8 (the new method) get you into the recovery mode – allowing for the advanced start-up menu to access safe mode.

If you’ve already run into this problem, the best solution I’ve found is to click the shut down button at the login screen and hold down the shift button as you click reset. This will bring up the troubleshooting menu and you can select Advanced Settings then Start Up Settings, making it so when your computer reboots you will be able to press 5 for safe mode with networking and install the drivers necessary to fix this problem.