Recent AMD Radeon graphics driver is reportedly bricking Windows

[Daniel Sims]

Facepalm: It's bad enough that users with older AMD graphics cards had to wait two months for a new driver. Now, reports indicate the driver is making Windows 10 and 11 unbootable. Team Red hasn't officially responded yet, but those installing the driver should set a new system restore point first to be safe.

Users around the web report that AMD's Radeon Adrenalin 23.2.1 graphics driver prevents Windows systems from booting, forcing some to reinstall Windows. Theories abound about the cause, but a definitive solution hasn't emerged.

Since releasing the driver on Valentine's Day, complaints emerged across Reddit, Twitter, the ComputerBase forums, and likely elsewhere. Affected users say that after installing the Adrenalin driver, they receive an Inaccessible Boot Drive error. Some report that moving to an earlier Windows System Restore point saved them from having to reinstall the operating system completely.

The official Twitter account for the CapFrameX software advises those affected to check their boot options in the BIOS, suspecting that the driver changed the BIOS settings. Some theorize that a recent Windows update didn't fully agree with the new driver.

[Update] The driver seems to change BIOS settings. Check the boot options when your system doesn't boot after installing the driver. Do not just reinstall the OS.

— CapFrameX (@CapFrameX) February 15, 2023

The situation is incredibly discouraging because, for most AMD GPU owners, this is the first new driver from the company since early December. Team Red focused its driver updates exclusively on its new Radeon RX 7000 cards throughout December and January.

Until this week, owners of the RX 6000 series and earlier GPUs missed out on optimizations for major games like the Dead Space remake, Forspoken, and Hogwarts Legacy. The February driver also adds optimizations for Spider-Man, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Hitman 3, F1 2022, and other games while fixing a serious and longstanding problem with SpaceEngine. The critical issue with 23.2.1 may leave non-RX 7000 AMD users waiting even longer for these improvements.

Owners of Radeon 6800U devices like the Ayaneo 2 and Ayaneo Geek should also be careful with the 23.2.1 driver because a glitch causes it to reduce the APU's available VRAM to 512MB. Ayaneo advises users to flash a new BIOS via USB after checking the memory in the task manager. Ayaneo's advisory strengthens the theory that something in AMD's latest driver is affecting the BIOS, but it's not clear how the driver affects other 6800U machines like the GPD Win Max 2.

When uninstalling problematic drivers, third-party software like Display Driver Uninstaller can ensure a clean uninstallation. Users should set a system restore point before using it, however.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/97652-amd-2321-graphics-driver-reportedly-bricking-windows.html

 

[takaozo]

This is bad for AMD, yet another driver related issue. And this after the vapour chamber fiasco and RDNA3 launch drivers.
Can this be Karma striking back for the 7000 series pricing?

Get your shlt toghether AMD, I need a new card soon.

P.S. this makes Intel GPU drivers look good since they only need a restart.

 

[Julnor]

It probably has to do with the new Win10 update, I actually couldn't install it. I'm also using driver only because Adrenaline has been horrible for me across the board.

My next GPU will be Nvidia again, and I likely will never purchase another AMD GPU again. Not sure about Ryzen, I haven't had an AMD CPU since the Phenom II which were good CPUs but Intel's Sandy Bridge was just way better a year or so later. Right now AMD and Intel are in parity for CPU except the 3dvcache puts AMD way ahead for many games, I wonder if Intel will have a response for that. They literally just need to put more cache, which they had already done with ecache way back on a 5775 or whatever that CPU was. For some reason they just refuse to do so however.

 

[yRaz]

*runs Linux*
*laughs*

I just made a Facebook marketplace ad and I'll make boatloads of money off fixing this

 

[Dimitriid]

Shame that I was actually looking forward to either an ultra light laptop or some of these type of console-like 6800u based devices but honestly, not after this: Completely unacceptable for them to be this bad, pretty much makes only the Steam Deck the only viable handheld device but you guessed it: "This item is not available for reservation in your country"

 

[Lew Zealand]

Weird. I assume that this is affecting people who are using some sort of non-standard Boot BIOS settings? I Installed the new driver 2 days ago and it just worked. And nobody'd mentioned this issue in the TPU forums as of this morning with a lot of people already updating their drivers.

 

[Trunks0]

This is bad for AMD, yet another driver related issue. And this after the vapour chamber fiasco and RDNA3 launch drivers.
Can this be Karma striking back for the 7000 series pricing?

Get your shlt toghether AMD, I need a new card soon.

P.S. this makes Intel GPU drivers look good since they only need a restart.

Again? If your referring to the batch of cards with crack cores from a bit ago, was debunked as it being driver related.

 

[Lionvibez]

You guys are late with this story.

I ran into this also when I installed the new driver on my 6800XT over the 11.2 drivers. Got a Windows repair boot loop then had to use a restore point to get back to windows. The fix on my system was to disable fast boot and every now runs great with the new driver.

Some people were not able to recover their systems and got some corruption with an invalid boot device and that point if you can't restore or have a image you are reinstalling windows.

 

[paul1122]

Just buy a new card peons. I can't stress enough how important it is to give graphics card makers all the money you can. You are basically cheating mankind by not upgrading whenever they see fit. Be a team player please. Nvidia and AMD cannot buy their own cards and make money. They would if they could though.

 

[Sonojo]

I have an Asrock RX 6900 XT and installed this new driver and it is working with no problem

 

[hclark1160]

I have a XFX Radeon RX 6900 XT Speedster and installed it on windows 11 2 days ago with no trouble at all.

 

[Bullwinkle M]

It probably has to do with the new Win10 update, I actually couldn't install it.

I'm currently testing further before I completely agree that it is a Windows Update problem

After installing the February updates, Windows 10 became unusable on a Sandy Bridge Laptop

Windows would not recover from S3 sleep state and booting into Windows went from 15 seconds to 1/2 hour

Shut down never completed and hangs in an unusable state

Nothing works after attempting sleep state, but everything seemed fine before that

I am testing a valid backup now on an separate but identical SSD

After the updates, I will verify whether the problem was the update or the SSD suddenly going bad for absolutely no reason (WD Blue SSD)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update:

WOW, turns out Microsoft was not to blame for once

I really did have an SSD go bad for no reason

Wow
Wow
Wow
Just...........Wow!

 

[mgilbert]

Every driver release since 22.5.1 has had issues. Tomb Raider 2013 from Epic Games would crash on startup, for example. But, the weirdest problem has been the cursor jumping back and hiding the previously typed character when typing comments online, especially in YouTube . Both these problems still exist with 23.2.1. I went back to 22.5.1. Has anyone else?

 

[takaozo]

Again? If your referring to the batch of cards with crack cores from a bit ago, was debunked as it being driver related.

No, I was referring to the fact that FSR3 was not available on launch day.

L.E. And the fact that not every driver version is WHQL.

 

[takaozo]

Just buy a new card peons. I can't stress enough how important it is to give graphics card makers all the money you can. You are basically cheating mankind by not upgrading whenever they see fit. Be a team player please. Nvidia and AMD cannot buy their own cards and make money. They would if they could though.

If you give us the money, we would.

 

[Trunks0]

No, I was referring to the fact that FSR3 was not available on launch day.

L.E. And the fact that not every driver version is WHQL.

There was no way AMD was going to be able to respond to nVidia's motion interpolation tech that fast. Expecting otherwise would be extremely naive.

WHQL isn't worth waiting for. Your better off releasing before Microsoft certifies it. Just because a driver has it, also doesn't mean much of anything. Microsoft's testing is extremely lax and bad drivers, for all sorts of hardware, gets through it all the time.

 

[takaozo]

There was no way AMD was going to be able to respond to nVidia's motion interpolation tech that fast. Expecting otherwise would be extremely naive.

WHQL isn't worth waiting for. Your better off releasing before Microsoft certifies it. Just because a driver has it, also doesn't mean much of anything. Microsoft's testing is extremely lax and bad drivers, for all sorts of hardware, gets through it all the time.

I understand some of the reasons for this, but it makes them look like amateurs.

 

[dnous]

I had the same issue, was greeted with a black screen after installing the new drivers. Luckily Windows defaulted back to its drivers and I managed to do a clean install of the drivers and now it runs without issues. Not the most user friendly way of doing things.

 

[Jonny5]

I'm currently testing further before I completely agree that it is a Windows Update problem

After installing the February updates, Windows 10 became unusable on a Sandy Bridge Laptop

Windows would not recover from S3 sleep state and booting into Windows went from 15 seconds to 1/2 hour

Shut down never completed and hangs in an unusable state

Nothing works after attempting sleep state, but everything seemed fine before that

I am testing a valid backup now on an separate but identical SSD

After the updates, I will verify whether the problem was the update or the SSD suddenly going bad for absolutely no reason (WD Blue SSD)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update:

WOW, turns out Microsoft was not to blame for once

I really did have an SSD go bad for no reason

Wow
Wow
Wow
Just...........Wow!

Hey it might be possible to restore the drive by secure erasing it, I have a older SSD that went super dead slow but after secure erasing its still going strong

https://grok.lsu.edu/article.aspx?articleid=16716

 

[winjer]

I installed them on a 6800XT a few days ago. No issues with it so far.
And performance went up on a few games.
For me it has been a great driver update.

 

[Nobina]

No problems here on RX 6700 XT.

 

[Benchsalyst]

This is bad for AMD, yet another driver related issue. And this after the vapour chamber fiasco and RDNA3 launch drivers.
Can this be Karma striking back for the 7000 series pricing?

Get your shlt toghether AMD, I need a new card soon.

P.S. this makes Intel GPU drivers look good since they only need a restart.

Nope , 7900 series arent affected , at least with windows 10 . Knowing Windows 11 problems with AMD hardware , is it surprising ?

 

[Benchsalyst]

On windows 10, there are several problems but we cant say if it is due to windows 10 , AMD driver or , BIOS parameters ( including intel conceptions like xmp etc ) .
With this 23.2.1 , no problem . I had 3 crashes but after having opened another soft before a game and after a turn in the bios and restarts they disappeared .
Windows 10 and 11 are shits , said that , no problem with windows 10 with the XTX .
I think most of AMD problems are due to windows and it is because : I uses AMD hardware , there are no unchanging causes to problems .

 

[Benchsalyst]

I would add that OBS AV1 integration is not integrated for windows 10 . Plus , if we refer to released note, this integration is only for recording , not for streaming . If we take in account that this obs update came very late since 7900 series launch , it is another prove that software are generally against AMD due to obviously wintel nvidia as usual ( I think obs has integrated AV1 on nvidia cards since a long moment ago ).
Note that , despite sukcing softwares , AMD hardware does a good performance , so imagine if they had softwares with them .

 

[Anthony j]

Hey guys, I received and installed my 7900xtx on Valentine’s Day, I’m on windows 10, and I used DDU to do a fresh driver install. Well I immediately noticed windows and driver issues. I’m getting random blue screens or even my pc will lock up when I close a game. The whole thing is bizarre and sad. When everything works though this card blows everything out of the water so I don’t mind being patient