Just leafed through the 8 pages on this to end up with a cable problem. We have this issue at work on a number of Dell Latitude E series (5430, 6430 etc), mine is an E5430 (all Intel) running 64-bit Windows 8 attached on VGA and HDMI to twin Dell U2412M displays. I won't dump the config as others have commented its not likely to shed much light on it. To be fair to Nic (and Intel) it is un-realistic that they wouldn't bother to fix this and can't just buy an off-the-shelf kit as we have all done to experience it. So in the best tradition of its the simple stuff, I'm thinking it maybe is the cable and Itel are just re-using the same cables they always use?
In the office we use docking stations that put out dual DVI feeds to drive our (exclusively) Dell monitors. At home I don't have a dock and use a VGA cable to one and a combined HDMI-DVI cable (in this case I'm in Australia using an XtremeHD HDMI-DVI cable). Back at the office before I got the docking station I used a completely different generic HDMI-DVI cable.
Whilst I'm happy to go spend the $50 to get another cable or an adapter, I'm not sure that will solve it (having tried two setups so far) - maybe Intel can try this? For me as my monitors don't have HDMI inputs I will always have to convert HDMI to DVI, so other than buying a docking station....