Hello there everyone, and thank you in advance for your assistance.
One week ago while playing War Thunder, a friend of mine suggested that I should update the drivers for my Intel HD Graphics card, as it would increase the frame rate of the game. I did exactly that and the effects were awesome. However, to my horror, I cannot seem to play half of the games I used to be able to! ArmA II: Operation Arrowhead, Left 4 Dead 2, Kerbal Space Program, and a multitude of others. The game will start up and once it does, the screen will go black and do nothing more, sounds continue to play in the background and everything functions, but it will not work. I can restart the computer, or even just put it to sleep with a keyboard command. When I do the latter, everything comes back as normal with whatever game at hand sitting on the "Start Bar", I have to close it out, otherwise the screen will black out again and I will be forced to put the laptop back into sleep mode. (Yes, I have tried Alt-Tabbing, Windows-Tabbing, and many other things.)
As a possible solution, I downloaded the earliest drivers I could get my hands on to see if I could solve the issue, however, the exact same thing happens. I still can play some games, which is strange, and for example, ArmA II: Operation Arrowhead will render in windowed mode, but whenever a game goes full screen it "kills" the screen.
Someone please help me!
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601)
System Manufacturer: Acer
System Model: Aspire 5750Z
BIOS: InsydeH2O Version V1.13
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU B950 @ 2.10GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.1GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Page file: 1907MB used, 5986MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
-Display-
Intel(R) HD Graphics
Chip Type: Intel(R) HD Graphics Family
DAC Type: Internal
Approx. total Memory: 1760MB
Driver Version: 9.17.10.3347
DDI Version: 10.1
Driver Model: WDDM 1.1
Through my searches I learned it was formerly known as the "Sandy Bridge"?