windows 7 - Dell Latitude E6410 blank screen

The culprit: Dell Latitude E6410 with Intel HD graphics and Bios A13 (latest)

The OS: Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit

The issue: Installing graphics drivers causes the internal LCD to go blank. External displays work great as the main display, but nothing is shown on the internal LCD when inside of Windows with the display driver installed.

Notes of interest: The bios screen shows fine on the machine, and the bios states that it has an Intel HD graphics card (originally thought maybe it had the nVidia NVS but was installing the wrong driver) Without a driver installed (Using standard vga driver) the internal monitor is fine.

What I have tried:

1. My standard method of building laptops - MDT 2012 + WDS - works great on every other laptop


2. Fresh build of Windows 7 from the DVD. Installed only the network card driver and rebooted, works, then installed the video driver and rebooted = blank screen


3. Updating with drivers from Windows Update


4. Updating with drivers from Dell directly


5. Updated the bios (was A03, went to A09, then A13 for good measure)


6. Attempted to follow the instructions listed here and had the drivers error out during install.


7. EDIT Also tried all of the FN+F8 combinations (duplicate, extend, single monitor, etc) with no luck.

Hopes and dreams: Someone out there has run into this error before, and has documented a proven way of fixing it.

Answer

Figured it out.

1. Boot to safe mode with networking


2. Removed the display driver with the checkbox to delete the files


3. Restarted


4. Downloaded the QM57/QS57 Intel GMA HD Drivers (multidriver download # R296701)


5. Install drivers


6. Reboot

Now I feel silly.