AMD admits their GPU Driver Breaks Windows (In rare case)

AMD GPU drivers have an unfortunate reputation. It seems to have been improving over time, but myself, many others, and now the PC World editor Brad Chacos have had their Windows install destroyed by AMD's 23.2.1 or 23.2.2 drivers. Here's the latest details and some thoughts on how this ties into the overall GPU marketshare and mindshare.
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[jumpman]

When “factory reset” option in the driver installer literally resets your entire PC to factory default

[amitnischal]

I am a first time buyer of AMD GPU considering all the hype around this card being able to beat RTX 3060 left right and center. I got myself Sapphire RX 6700 (non xt) paired with i5 10400. When i purchased the card in January the driver available was 22.11.2 and the card was running smooth. I skipped the 23.2.1 after reading few post on Reddit around people having issues. Lastly, updated the 23.2.2, thinking that AMD Adrenalin will do the work with factory reset option. Big Mistake i made as when I started playing 'Control' intermittent blackout started happening. Some post suggested it could be related to faulty HDMI cables. After, realizing it could be driver related I rolled back to 22.11.2, and since then my games are working as it was before. It seems i should have used DDU second time as well to install Drivers and AMD needs to do something about Factory Rest. If the option doesn't function as DDU then no point keeping it.

[BespokeTech]

This can also happen with Nvidia BTW. Unininstall or reinstalling a driver while windows also updates it is just a bad idea.

[thejackimonster]

Every time I hear stuff like this I ask myself: "Is this really a driver issue or a Windows issue?" Because when Windows own "Startup Repair" tool breaks your system further, this sounds like Microsoft did something horrible anyway...

Anyway just want to let you know: On Linux you don't have any such issues because every Linux-based system actually provides tools to properly install and uninstall drivers/(software in general). You don't need to use any third-party DDU-like tool and such...

[noer]

Hey Daniel!
Really loved your "some-GPU playing fortnite after the UE5 Update"-videos. Now that Intel seems to have massively improved their drivers for the Alchemist cards. Would love to see how a A750 or A770 runs UE5! Thanks for the great content. Really think you fill a nice part of the gpu tech-testing market which is really needed with theses real time running, commentation and showing live gameplay. Cheers!

[johnmellinger]

It's not a bug in the Adrenalin drivers. A few people were running Windows update and were using the factory Install option for new GPU drivers at the same time. Believe it or not. Factory install automatically reboots the system and if Windows update is running and installing into your C:/- and the AMD software reboots your system you will get a OS installation problem. Any software that reboots the system while Windows update is installing will have the exact same effect. You can do it yourself by simply forcing a reboot while WU is installing. No 3rd party software needed. It's surprising to see this is mentioned as a AMD driver bug. It's clearly not.

[joshschmidt]

Just recently (about 3 months ago) built a full AMD system (5700x and 6750xt) been solid since day one. There has only been one game so far out of my library that I have tested so far that has had minor issues. GTA V wouldn't save the direct x and a few other graphic options when you do the change restart after applying (so changing from directx 10 to 11). But I just manually changed to ini to force it to take the parameters that I wanted it to run in. Long story short I have had a great AMD experience so far! Hopefully it will stay strong like this well into the future. I have been on team Nvidia for the past 15 years or so, but their prices are getting outrageous, so I am switching teams.

[Anglashock]

If I spend $2000 aud on a graphics card I shouldn’t be concerned that the drivers are shite or will brick my system. I’m still on the fence about going back to AMD due to these sort of headlines. $2000 a lot of money.

[HappyHubris]

I recently moved from a 1080Ti to a 7900XTX and have had more driver crashes in my first month of the 7900XTX than I did over six years of the Nvidia card. Including a crash every night on sleep, crashing out of AAA games, etc.

Between the driver quirkiness, FSR vs DLSS, and ray tracing, AMD really feels like the "store brand" Nvidia.

[shanez]

Hmm, so it sounds like Windows Update is clashing with Adrenaline, although this is still something AMD needs to work with Microsoft to resolve.

I've also read online that a bunch of people had issues with 23.2.1 if they did not turn off fastboot in bios and fast startup in Windows. Fast Startup will save your driver into the hibernation file and is well known to cause issues with driver updates that restart the system. The reason why this is is that the driver it saves is the one currently running, which the new driver may have even applied patches too and made a Frankenstein's monster driver. Normally a reboot fixes this, but if you hit shut down and then power instead of restart, the Frankenstein's monster/old driver gets loaded up when the rest of the system is expecting the newest one.

Honestly, both features are a bandaid fix to slow boot times when hard drives were standard and should be turned off.

I turned off fast startup in Windows. However, my Gigabyte X570 motherboard has a weird issue where the bios' UI is completely unusable on ultrawide monitors, so I didn't check if fast boot was there.

I updated and initially had an issue where Adrenaline froze and hesitated to open, but after a few minutes and a reboot it's all good. I had no issues updated to 23.2.2.

Btw, something AMD needs to do is add an option in Adrenaline that keeps your last few driver installs and clears away the rest. Since many don't click the factory reset box in case of issues, so they end up with 10+ Adrenaline installs in the AMD folder. I had to clear out like 10GB of data from it lol.

[quantumjolt]

I've had both AMD 5700 xt and 6800, and both have been riddled with crashes, black screens and all the work. When I point this out, I get bombared with "it's probably something else" or "why were you so stupid that you updated your driver before browsing the forums". I'm shocked with the copium of the fanboyism going on, I dont want to spend time of my day searching obscure forum posts to see whether or not a driver update will brick my machine. It's absolutely absurd. I finally had enough and got a 3080 and sim-salabim, wouldn't you know it, no more issues. No more and never again is all I'm saying.

[zidanetribal]

Thats why we need to turn off our internet when installing new drivers, windows update will messed with your installation causing some issues.

When installing new drivers:
1. Download the drivers you want from amd website
2. Go into safe mode and use DDU
3. Update your driver (turn off your internet)

so far in my experience, im not having any kind of issues when installing new drivers..

[CuteSkyler]

My 5700XT has been nothing but horrible in terms of crashes, black- and greenscreens. It has gotten to the point where I do not want to get an AMD card anymore, it has been that terrible.
This is not even a Windows issue because I have been using Linux recently too and I've still gotten crashes.

[JesseMaurais]

AMD is going to live with the driver stigma for a long time. Hopefully they learn the lesson and not let it happen again.

[samk]

No issues for me on two PCs so far. RX 5700 XT and RX 6600 XT. Both had Windows 10 fully updated, had a system restore point manually created before the update, left "Factory reset" unchecked. I do recommend waiting a bit for any driver or Windows updates though. I've seen plenty of bad software released throughout my time working in the industry and don't trust anybody's initial release.

[anthonybusellato]

I switched to team red with a 7900 xtx red devil (beautiful card) and experienced this "super rare" computer-breaking driver issue. It took me days of troubleshooting and multiple Mobo's/CPU's to finally throw in the towel and return to Nvidia. I wanted to like AMD, but a broken computer from a driver update is unsat. DO BETTER AMD

[maxbirdsey]

I had this happen to me January 8th this year with my 6800 XT, so this isn't limited to the February drivers. What threw me off even more is that I'd installed a Samsung 990 Pro about 4 days earlier, and given the firmware issues that was having, it did make me wonder if that had somehow already failed. But given it was literally after an auto-restart from the driver install process (possibly November '22 because It would've probably been the last recommended drivers) I kinda sussed out it must've been the GPU drivers. Took a few weeks for reports of this to pop-up online.

Like shown in the video, I also had Factory Reset checked.

And like Daniel, I just ended up doing a fresh Windows reinstall.

I've also had issues with MPO, don't know if these have been fixed yet but I don't really see the difference with MPO disabled so cba to find out.

Other than that and MPO, I've had 0 issues with AMD Recommend drivers. Personally wouldn't/won't touch the Optional ones. I do really like the Adrenalin software though, I just wish AMD could put out higher quality drivers with more consistency (it took 6 months for 22.11.2 to transition to recommended from the last 22.5.1...)

[NulJern]

i think you are right. Also.. I think that's why AMD is so "on it" when it comes to fixing this, cause even if you might not be that many affected it is still a BIG issue. I always had AMD cpu's and no big driver problems however this year i bought my first radeon gpu so hope i don't regret it. but driver issues is kinda a pc thing and most people experience it, some more than others.

[jamesFX]

It looks like Windows Auto update (which also auto installs missing device drivers) is trying to install its own drivers in the background without people noticing and corrupting the windows install on boot

Simple solution is to simply unplug from your network before uninstaling or reinstalling drivers, this will stop windows update from searching/downloading drivers and microsoft store from installing the Store version of radeon setttings menu which is usually out of date (it does this automatically if you only have the display drivers but dont have radeon settings menu installed) and always download the newest version of ddu (important and this has happened to me before in the past, if you use a very old version of ddu there is a very small chance it might delete stuff related to your chipset drivers if your on a ryzen system) and use it in safe mode.

Once ddu task is done, boot back into Windows' normal mode and install drivers there, make sure 'reset to factoy' is unchecked

Another thing I noticed after doing some reading into this is that for some reason, a very small number of people seem to be trying to force install their gpu drivers in safe mode after using ddu, which is really not a good idea for gpu drivers

[HanSolo__]

I don't mind driver issues in AMD or Intel. It is an easy fix. My problem is RX 7900XT for $1000, RX 7900XTX for $1200, and Arc has not launched with some better specs than the low-mid and medium-level GPUs.