Hi everyone, I have a W540 running win8.1pro since mid-2014 and clean installed win10pro with a new SSD in mid-2016. It worked like a charm until the recent 1709 update, after which graphic stutters and cursor hangs occur every now and then.

Here are the symptoms with my W540 after 1709:

• Flickering animations occur when I maximize/restore/stretch certain desktop and UWP windows (file explorer, IE, chrome, mail app, etc., see gif attached). This is happening even with clean boot and minimal load. Dragging file explorer between monitors stutters even worse.

• In file explorer, cursor always freezes(spinning) for 1-2 seconds when I right click on ANY .exe file if I enable NVIDIA's "Run with graphic processor" in context menu. Disable "Run with graphic processor" in context menu does relieve it.

I have all the updated drivers installed according to Lenovo's official site: https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/thinkpad-w-series-laptops/thinkpad-w540/20bg/downloads.

BTW, the System Update is not always able to find certain latest drivers like BIOS, even after a re-install.

No issues were detected with my hardware by Lenovo Solution Center. No threats were found by Windows Defender with full scan. All the troubleshoot in settings didn't help. I also ran CMD with sfc /scannow and DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth but no corrupted files were found. And after I uninstall graphic drivers, clean boot and reinstall them, these issues persist.

Although the issues may not seem pronounced, but they become really annoying and affect the productivity heavily because they always happen here and there! Before 1709 update, W540 was such a bug-free powerhouse. But now, even my old T400 with win7pro appears to run more smoothly.

I suspect the issues are related to the switchable graphic card drivers (released in Dec 2017) incompatible with the latest win10 update (pushed to my W540 in Jan 2018), but could be something else.

Some other users experience similar or worse freezing problems with Intel + NVIDIA Laptop with win10 especially after 1709:

https://communities.intel.com/thread/119093

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-performance/intel-nvidia-laptop-freeze-problem/93e7004a-62b1-4211-8e37-4c136608865e

At this point, I haven't tried to either rollback to win10 previous build or test out the latest drivers directly from NVIDIA and INTEL, which might cause bigger problems like BSOD (from my experience).

I wonder if anyone here experiences similar issues, even with other dual graphics win10 laptop? And if these are known issues in current build, is Lenovo aware of it or working on a solution with intel/nvidia/microsoft?

Any related comments and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks in advance.

I tested my win8.1 backup drive on the same device.

On win8.1, applications like file explorer and image browser run more fluently when openning up folders containing thumbnails/icons. Windows' animations don't flicker when maximizing and restoring. Dragging windows transits smoothly across monitors of different scaling. However, cursor latency with .exe triggered by NVIDIA's "run with graphic processor" exists, which is also aggravated after clicking the Extract button of file explorer's "Compressed Folder Tools" (I don't recall it being a glitch back then).

Then I went back to win10 1709, checked the Lenovo website, and saw a graphics driver update. So I downloaded and installed it but it didn't mitigate the issues.

Wonder if these are due to the limit of my graphic cards or somthing else which cannot handle 1709 well?

When I install graphics driver bundle from Lenovo, do I have to uninstall all the previous versions?

Is there a way to configure system and uwp apps on win10 so they don't stutter, especially when moving accross monitors of varied scaling?

Thanks.