I recently updated my Intel CPU/iGPU drivers on Windows, and after rebooting, I'm facing some serious issues. I'm getting visual artifacts (like lines across the bottom of the screen), I can't log in because of an invalid credentials loop, and I sometimes end up with a black screen after the Windows logo. Everything runs fine on Linux on the same machine, so I know it's not a hardware issue. I've tried System Restore, Automatic Repair, and Safe Mode, but nothing has worked so far. What can I do to fix this?
4 Answers
I had to create a clean Windows USB installation to get past this. Honestly, I can’t believe how traumatizing that Intel driver update was!
Try the shortcut Win + Ctrl + Shift + B; it can reset the graphics driver. If that doesn’t work, reboot into Safe Mode and adjust the drivers from there.
Boot into Safe Mode with Networking using Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). From there, download the GPU drivers from either your PC's webpage or Intel's official site. I recommend using Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) to perform a clean install of the drivers. Windows Update often causes problems with hardware drivers, so let DDU manage that. Here’s a good guide for DDU: https://www.wagnardsoft.com/content/how-use-display-driver-uninstaller-ddu-guide-tutorial
You might want to try uninstalling the latest drivers and roll back to an older version. Sometimes, the updates can mess things up big time.
I can't even see anything—just a black screen and lines. I even tried resetting the PC while keeping my files, but it didn't help.
That didn’t do the trick for me. I ended up uninstalling the driver from recovery and did a complete clean install of Windows (not via cloud option because it wouldn't let me) but I'm still facing the same issues. For now, I'm just sticking with Linux.