Thinkpads Forum

Hello,
I did a reinstall of Win7(64bit) on my newly acquired T420 (4177-q5u). All went well except can't get the graphics adapter to push the stated 1366x768 resolution, best I can get is 1024x768. I've tried the HD 3000 drivers from both Intel and Lenovo websites and the "Graphics Adapter WDDM1.1, Graphics Adapter WDDm1.2 - Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000" update from Windows Update, each attempt produces the "Windows did not shut down properly..." message and I have to go to safe mode to revert back to the previous config. I ran the Lenovo Motherboard test and Memory test and both were good. Any ideas on what to do next? Thanks in advance.

Interesting... I entered 4177-q5u on the Lenovo supports site and get this:
15-2520M(2.50GHz) 2GB RAM 320GB 7200rpm HD 14in 1366x768 LCD Intel HD Graphics CDRW/DVDRW 1Gb Ethernet UltraNav Secure Chip Camera 6c Li-Ion Win7 Pro 64

But... When I pull up the info my T420 for (Graphics) Adapter Type, I get this: Standard VGA Graphics Adapter, and this: Intel(R) Sandybridge Mobile Graphics Chipset

Explains why the HD 3000 drivers I tried to install did not work. So the question now is what's the dealio? Supposed to have an Intel HD adapter in there.

I actually have 8GB of RAM installed and I believe integrated graphics adapters share RAM memory but that should not create hardware compatibility issues right?

Install the Thinkvantage Software Update tool.

Let it do it's thing.

The Thinkvantage Software Update tool was installed and it pulled the appropriate driver but it also resulted in the same issue. Thank for the suggestion.

I heart beer wrote:But... When I pull up the info my T420 for (Graphics) Adapter Type, I get this: Standard VGA Graphics Adapter, and this: Intel(R) Sandybridge Mobile Graphics Chipset

That's fine. Try updating the driver from Intel's website.

I was able to find two older Intel HD graphics drivers, one of them dating back to 2013, neither driver was able to solve the reboot cycle. One of the drivers was a available as a .zip package so I unpacked it and then pointed to the driver files using the native Windows driver update method thinking maybe the packaged install utility may be causing the issue and bypassing it might work. No go on that one too.

What happens if you uninstall the VGA driver?

@ajkula66,

Updating driver from the Intel site was one on the first things I tried, no go that driver. Thank you.

"What happens if you uninstall the VGA driver?"

The VGA driver only pushes 1024x768 instead of 1366x768 so the laptop is usable but... I'd like to get to 1366x768.

ajkula66 wrote:

ajkula66 wrote:What happens if you uninstall the VGA driver?

Ahhh... I did not try to uninstall the VGA driver. The VGA driver was there by default so I did not think it would be prudent to uninstall it as it was the only driver working.

I heart beer wrote: Ahhh... I did not try to uninstall the VGA driver. The VGA driver was there by default so I did not think it would be prudent to uninstall it as it was the only driver working.

Nope. The other (SandyBridge) driver should be perfectly valid.

OK, so I exchanged the T420 back to the original owner for the my original payment. (Thank you J for your willingness to work with me on this.) He just got back to me and said he was able to get it to boot up. He said the original config was 4GB of RAM so he pulled one of the memory sticks and "voila" laptop boots up. His message to me:

"I figured it out. It didn't like the Ram. When I originally upgraded the ram to 8gb the graphics driver was already installed. I reverted back to 4Gb, let it boot up... shut down, put 8gb back in.... now it boots fine"

Kinda make sense because integrated video shares RAM but kinda wacky because I attempted a fresh OS install with the 8GB of RAM already in place.

In any case all is well that ends well.