My laptop worked just fine until 2 days ago. After exiting some program windows crashed and I had to restart my laptop. After restart (windows booted) I got black screen with cursor. I googled it and find out that it could be a GPU problem, so from safe mode I disabled my AMD Radeon HD 8xxxM (8500M/8700M to be precise) driver and after that windows was working fine until this crash happened again. Again from safe mode I saw that GPU driver is enabled (windows enabled it somehow...).
After that I downloaded Display Driver Uninstaller and used it from safe mode to disable my driver and now it works just fine but I am not able to use my GPU now...
I tried to update my windows but also in the middle of update I get black screen (I think it downloads and enables GPU driver during update).
Installing all possible versions of AMD Catalyst didn't work. I tried "Automatically Detect and Install Your Driver" and "Manually Select Your Driver" and even installing versions which are not for my driver and my OS. (somewhere in middle of process I get one time black screen blink and after that it is persistent and I have to go to safe mode and use DDU all over again)
So I am stuck here, not able to update my windows, without my GPU (I am not gamer, I just want picture on my external monitor) and desperate.
Solutions I found until now includes removing drivers with DDU and reinstalling Catalyst but that doesn't work for me.
My configuration
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 8500M/8700M
OS: Windows 8.1 Pro
Possible problem that I haven't checked: Could it be hardware problem? (dead GPU?)
Possible solution that I haven't tried: 1) Reinstalling Windows. (could it help?). 2) Disabling GPU and updating windows.
EDIT
Laptop model: Dell Inspirion 5521
Programs I installed 3-5 days before crash (causality?): Adobe Flash Player 18 NPAPI, Drobox (update) and Popcorn Time.
EDIT 1
I think I found something really important. I have also Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 and when I install drivers for both intel and radeon I get black screen. When only intel driver is installed it's working and when only radeon driver is installed I got error Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)
. Maybe this could be useful for someone to help me solve this issue.
CURRENT STATUS 7/21/2015
I wasn't able to find correct solution for this. Thanks @Divin3 for your help!
I was closest to solution when I downloaded all video drivers from dell.com (official website) for my laptop model and install them in order Intel -> restart -> Radeon (I wasnt getting black screen) -> restart (after second restart there was black screen).
Installing previous versions and beta versions also didn't work for me, so now I am waiting to update to Windows 10 and will install all drivers there.
For now I have only installed Intel video drivers - thats my current solution.
If I solve this problem I will update my quesiton for future generations...
HOW I SOLVED IT
I wasn't able to find official solution for this problem.
After upgrading to windows 10 both my drivers were updated and both are working properly now.