AMD drivers causing PC to freeze

Esteban Alfaro · Jun 10, 2015

Hello everyone,

First of all let me thank you for any information on this matter, yesterday I was playing a videogame and suddenly the screen froze, I wasn't able to do any other action other than a hard reset (as much as I hate them).

However when my PC restarted, the screen was displaying this strange horizontal lines across it:

To which after a minute seems to crash of just freeze completely, so I'm not able to disable the driver on a normal boot-up:

I can use the PC on safe mode, disable the driver and boot-up normally without the driver (uses the standard VGA card). But whenever I manage to install any of the AMD Catalyst drivers the lines appear over the screen, sometimes causing a BSOD (haven't managed to get the error code yet as the BSOD is random).

My PC is a DELL XPS 8500, the graphics card which it comes with is the AMD Radeon HD 7870. I have tried installing both the driver available from DELL as well as the one from the auto-detect tool (recommends AMD Catalyst 14.12 Omega Win 7 64-bit), even after using a cleaning tool it all ends the same way.

Sorry of the long post, not sure if anyone can help me with this? I really hope it's not a hardware issue, I still have the warranty but many people have told me that this is a driver issue?

Anyway thanks in advance!!

junkeymonkey · Jun 10, 2015

well i'll tell you with my 7850 and 14.12 gave me issues . not so bad as you seem to have, but it would just black screen to the point I thought the card went dead . so I put in my back up card [ 6850 ] ,and with in a week it started acting up as well. so playing around I noticed as with you the card was normal on standard vga driver so un installed the 14.12 and put the 7850 back in booted to desktop just fine and went back to 13.12 .. with them I have -0- issues not even a flicker and the text is a heck of a lot cleaner

so I would uninstall the driver you got now and get back to windows standered vga driver and download and install 13.12 and run it and see where it goes on that..

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/GPU57RemoveOldGraphicsDrivers.aspx

then manually find driver
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download

you will end up at the 14.12 page and over to the right of the page you will see ''Previous Drivers and Software'' click on it .

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows%207%20-%2064

then choose 13.12
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/previous?os=Windows%207%20-%2064

then heres the download page for 13.12

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/previous?os=Windows%207%20-%2064

I assume windows 7 ?

I also recommend reading the drivers release notes so if there's something that changes for each driver it should be in them to be reviewed [ install -uninstall - fixed issues - known issues so forth and so on ]

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMDCatalyst13-12WINReleaseNotes.aspx

give them a try and see

Esteban Alfaro · Jun 12, 2015

junkeymonkey :

Hi junkeymonkey,

Thank you for your help on this, I tried all the steps that you mentioned but I'm afraid that it's still happening. After uninstalling and then installing the 13.12 version the screen is still displaying the flickers.

I'll keep trying other solutions and report back if I manage to find anything.

junkeymonkey · Jun 12, 2015

let me ask this then if you do another fresh install or the amd driver and do a custom install then uncheck everything but the display driver for its install only and see if it occurs on just that ?

if it seems good the go and do each of the rest one at a time to see how they do as you go ??

it maybe a failed card cause on windows default driver it just loads the least amount need to run the card to display with out taxing the card .

when you load the full driver from amd that enables the full features of the card and that's where it now not able to fully work anymore ??

also in the windows event viewer when you had the drivers installed under applications and services logs open the ACEevent log tab and that's the cards event logs .. you may see or find something from it ?

then I guess you need to test another card in your rig and test your card in another rig to see if its your system or the card its self

Esteban Alfaro · Jun 14, 2015

junkeymonkey :

Just finished with a fresh re-install, the problems are only appearing when the full driver is loaded.

junkeymonkey :

I'm afraid that I'm not able to see the logs, the system crashes before I'm able to do anything while the drivers are installed.

junkeymonkey :

Yeah I guess I'll have to do that, I'll give a call to DELL and see if they can help me with another card, I'll update this if it gets fixed, thanks for your help!

junkeymonkey · Jun 14, 2015

well according to dell it came with a oem 7570 card not a 7870 in AMD ?? [did not catch that at the start]

http://www.dell.com/ed/business/p/xps-8500/pd

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883155557

http://www.extremetech.com/deals/157094-et-deals-649-for-dell-xps-8500-core-i7-desktop

one thing about upgrading a prebuilt is out side of what dell supports and offers it all at your own risk if it full works or not ..

my disclaimer

some models of store bought computers [dell.hp,acer,ect..] may come with a ''locked or fixed'' bios and may not allow you to change certain hardware as a video card.. this is done to protect them from undue warranty claims and refunds .this is not done to hurt you but to protect them. you really need to see if that upgrade has been proven to work in your model first before you invest money in it .. there are a lot of these threads here at toms to look at some models will allow upgrades and some dont.. and a lot of guys here say ya ya ya when is really no no no...it would be sad you spent $200 on a card that wount post after you installed it as most find out. then get told its your psu and you spend more and end up right back where you are now, but its up to you good luck..

you got to know the the boards in these computers are not like the ones we use to do custom builds witch are open to upgrading with in the boards compatibly . the bios is custom made for there design and just for the parts they authorize to be used on there computers there only guaranteed to work as is out of the box as you bought it ,..

could be it worked just so long it finely give it up ??

unless you can test another card in it or your card in another computer [non prebuilt] you now just don't know

good luck

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