Updating the drivers is always a good suggestion and approach. Unfortunately, I'm running the lastest Lenovo blessed drivers for that card. If you try to install the Intel versions (from their website) it will tell you to get it from your manfacturer.
There are, of course, ways around this. With a bit of ingenuity you can grab the files the intel driver install exe extracted from your temp dir and copy them to a different location. Go through the update driver wizard using device manager to update the Intel HD Graphics card. Tell it to let you pick the device driver from a list and use have disk to browse to the directory you pulled out of temp. Find the inf in the graphics sub-dir. This will let you install the Intel version of the driver.
Lenovo's version was about 4 months behind. Low and behold the Intel updated version worked. No more crazy blocks. Hopefully Lenovo will get their driver up to date.
Thanks for the suggestion, Hubdule. I thought about doing this, but then decided against it initially as it seemed it should work with the latest manufacturers driver. It figures it was a driver issue.
Still interested in seeing if anyone had/has the issue I experienced. I'd love to know if there are others and what graphics cards they are using.
I am excited that its working and i can continue my development.