Blurry fonts on T420 with 64-bit Win 7, Intel HD Graphics 3000 & ThinkPad Display 1600x900

[eemelis]

Hi,

my brand new ThinkPad displays most of the fonts blurry, yet readable, and the slight non-sharpness is literally causing me a headache. This problem recurs everywhere: Windows menus, desktop icon titles, web pages, etc. There are few fonts (e.g. Arial) that are displayed rather correcly - regardless of the source - and the blurriness of the "bad" font varies.

The problems gets even worse and affects colors & contrast also when using an external display, which was working just fine with my old L520.

According to all possible Lenovo, Intel & Windows check-ups I have the newest drivers and sotware for graphics and display, and no problems can be detected in any related functinality. Only The Windows Experience Index is giving a mere 4,4 points / 7,9 score for Graphics based on Desktop Performance assesment. We couldn't find any difference between the settings on my laptop compared to a colleague's exact same alike that displays all just perfect.

I've tired updating the graphics drivers, installing older version, editing any possible settings or restoring the defaults, used ClearType Text adjustment, disabling Windows Aero... you name it. The only this that has helped so far was running on low battery when all the sudden and by itself the font display became all good for until I plugged the power source back in.

Has anyone had similar issues? I'll be grateful for any advice on this one!

[ColonelONeill]

Try color calibrating the screen using the built-in wizard. You might also want to intentionally miscalibrate it to get more comfortable results (especially by messing with the gamma slider).

[eemelis]

I have tried this too a few times already, but unfortunately it also fails to do the trick.

Thanks for the advice anyways! 

Actually the Intel Graphics Driver version 9.17.10.2843 seemed to solve most of the problem, and now the general picture and almost all fonts are sharp again.

Yet still in some places (such MS Office products' window headlines or Arial Narrow typed in Excel cells) the fonts are displayed pixelated, and the actual font appears to be different from the default. Also the blurriness of those occational fonts is different from what it was before the driver update - the "cracking" of the fonts' lines is more clear and not so bad for the eyes.

The overall source of the mystery issue remains though.

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

try loading an older Intel display driver. Apparently the latest version of the Intel display driver forces subpixel anti-aliasing, which maybe what you are experiencing.

[A1X]

I'm running on 9.17.10.2932 and I don't notice any blurriness (and never had, regardless driver version used); 6.4 WEI score for graphics and gaming graphics, W7 64, 1600x900.

[ColonelONeill]

I've had no change upgrading versions. I'm at 9.17.10.3062 right now.

[dlbbld]

I have problem with blurred fonts display with T400, TYPE 6475 (so Intel Graphics), Windows 7 64-bit. The problem started to occur about one month ago after I updated the video driver in system panel.

Reinstalling the video driver did not fix the problem. Parts of the fonts on the screen are displayed blurry sometimes, occurring in an unclear pattern. If the windows is sent to background and brought to foreground again the problem vanishes.

Please check the printscreen below where the font in the third row in the table is blurred.

best regards, Daniel

[Puppy]

---

eemelis wrote:

The overall source of the mystery issue remains though.

---

I have similar issue on X220 http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/Intel-HD-video-driver-update-forced-antialiasi... but none of 9.x driver versions (both Lenovo OEM and Intel generic) works for me because makes permament blurry fonts. I had to revert to old 8.15.10.2769. The whole story is here http://communities.intel.com/message/189854 and still unresolved yet.

There are some differences to your original issue:

- it does not affect external monitor output connected via DisplayPort

- installing the old 8.15.10.2769 driver (after experiments with 9.x ones) always works and resolves it

The issue should be investigated especially since it is confirmed for multiple machines.

[Puppy]

---

eemelis wrote:
We couldn't find any difference between the settings on my laptop compared to a colleague's exact same alike that displays all just perfect.

---

That's the most interesting observation. Did you have the same video driver version and BIOS version ?

[dlbbld]

This is for me one of the most annoying problems I experienced.

It started as mentioned after I updated the graphics driver using Windows Update. It persisted after reinstalling the driver using the latest driver version (using Windows Update just recently or by downloading the latest driver).

After I finally reinstalled a previous driver the problem vanished right away. The previous driver file name was 7xd153ww.exe. Under the Driver Tab in Device Manager for the Display Adapter it is reported as

Driver Provider: Intel Corporation

Driver Date: 06.05.2009

Driver version: 8.15.10.1749

Digital Signer: Microsoft Windows

There is an article related to this problem on the lenovo site. These instructions however did not resolve the problem in my case:

Visual corruption - ThinkPad R400, R500, T400, T400s, T500, W500, X200, X200s, X200 Tablet, X301 http://support.lenovo.com/en_LK/diagnose-and-fix/detail.page?DocID=HT001223

This was only resolved after installing an older driver!