AMD Driver problem crashing Microsoft photo viewer... solved

[Minotaurtoo]

Short story time:

 

About 2 weeks ago Windows decided it was a great time to do an update... shortly after so did AMD...  Everything seemed fine, games still played nothing immediately noticed.  I worked, I played games, I watched tv... no issues... then last week I got nostalgic and started browsing my photos... opened 2 instances of windows default photo viewer... crashed... just disappeared, no warning, no error message, nothing.

 

Dug around a little and found an obscure error message in the event viewer... little googling later it suggested a c++ coding error... yeah right... tried resetting the app, tried a few other things I found on the interwebs... no good... finally thought to myself... why not try a DDU... then talked myself out of it... how could a driver problem cause a photo viewer to crash and nothing else.... guess what... today I did the DDU... reinstalled drivers... all is fixed....

 

Moral of the story, Never ever underestimate the power of a good DDU when it comes to AMD driver updates.  Hopefully if anyone else has photo viewer crashing problems, they will find this and it will fix their issue too.

[ArchStanton]

As someone who has twice updated the display driver since my initial boot last year, I keep wondering if I should perform a DDU before getting serious about wasting time in Time Spy .

[Minotaurtoo]

1 minute ago, ArchStanton said:

As someone who has twice updated the display driver since my initial boot last year, I keep wondering if I should perform a DDU before getting serious about wasting time in Time Spy .

After what just happened to me... I think I'll DDU pretty much every update lol

[ArchStanton]

7 minutes ago, Minotaurtoo said:

I think I'll DDU pretty much every update lol

It sounds like long term, this is a "best practice".

[Alastair]

I had a problem a little while ago. My Vega 64 kept black screen crashing to a hard reset. I couldn't figure out what the banana Republic was going on. I went down to default clocks. Nope. Dropped power limits down all the way to 200watts. Still kept crashing. Eventually dropping all the way to about 1500mhz on the Vega. All fingers pointed towards a power issue. 

 

Apon closer investigation I pulled out my pcie 8pins. I'm not sure if I cooked them during an OC session and pulled to much current or what. But underneath my cable  sleeving was nothing but naked copper. And even that was corroded and green. Probably didn't dry it out properly after a wash. So I thought I had figured out my troubles. But NO. 

 

I was still crashing. Not to black screen anymore but I was still getting driver timeouts. So out of desperation I did a DDU. And voila! No more issues. DDU and fresh drivers are so simple and often times all we need. 

[ENTERPRISE]

DDU is a magic little thing. Saved me a lot of trouble. Though I only use it when I have to and I do not tend to do a fresh install of GPU drivers every time there is an update as it is more of a hassle.  That being said, I have never had too many issues with Nvidia drivers. 

[Sir Beregond]

What is "DDU"?

[ArchStanton]

3 minutes ago, Sir Beregond said:

What is "DDU"?

Presumably Display Driver Uninstaller.  This serious issue was a simple fix... Here's how! - YouTube.

 

The developer even posts in the comments of the video 

 

[Minotaurtoo]

On 25/03/2022 at 12:05, Sir Beregond said:

What is "DDU"?

 

On 25/03/2022 at 12:13, ArchStanton said:

Presumably Display Driver Uninstaller.  This serious issue was a simple fix... Here's how! - YouTube.

 

The developer even posts in the comments of the video 

 

yes, this is correct... I should have elaborated a bit more.  Great little app for AMD users in distress lol

[bonami2]

Gonna try this right now with my 6800xt il report back in a few days!

[bonami2]

DId not fix my own issue. Just crashing a different ways.

 

Those driver are crap. Saw report of youtube crashing for some people.

1k gpu + having those issue make no sense.

 

At least it fixed your problem Minotaur.

 

6800xt for sale soon. Exhausted of amd.

[PCSarge]

On 28/03/2022 at 05:40, bonami2 said:

DId not fix my own issue. Just crashing a different ways.

 

Those driver are crap. Saw report of youtube crashing for some people.

1k gpu + having those issue make no sense.

 

At least it fixed your problem Minotaur.

 

6800xt for sale soon. Exhausted of amd.

but did you DDU you nvidia drivers off too? lol

[bonami2]

23 hours ago, PCSarge said:

but did you DDU you nvidia drivers off too? lol

Fresh install of windows before the 6800xt.

No idea. Wonder if it not defective or something still got a warantly.

 

 

[PCSarge]

1 hour ago, bonami2 said:

Fresh install of windows before the 6800xt.

No idea. Wonder if it not defective or something still got a warantly.

 

 

windows will install an outdated version of physx and such that ive had break the drivers in the past. also check if theres a bios switch on the card, if there is try the other bios

[pio]

1 hour ago, bonami2 said:

Fresh install of windows before the 6800xt.

No idea. Wonder if it not defective or something still got a warantly.

 

 

Like PCSarge said above, DDU full clean AMD / Nvidia drivers from your system in safe mode.  Make sure you do it in safe mode (and then reboot after cleaning).  Get your new drivers installing IMMEDIATELY after your reboot, before Windows decides to grab a driver from Win Update.  If you're still having problems, try the BIOS switch.  If you're still having problems, you might've gotten unlucky with a bad card....RMA it.  There is absolutely no excuse for the problems you're having with that card, I agree.  I just don't think its necessarily a driver problem, its more likely a card problem or BIOS issue.  I'll happily take it off your hands for the right price though.   I'd rather see you keep it and enjoy it though.  

 

One thing not mentioned lately either, you can also make sure that your motherboard BIOS is fully up to date as well.  Might even check the firmware on your GPU, and see if there's any updates to that from the manufacturer too.  Sometimes odd issues like these pop up, and they've already been addressed with BIOS updates for board or GPU.  I have a 7970 that wasn't working (correctly) on any machine that lacked UEFI.  Found out it needed a later BIOS revision installed to enable both BIOS and UEFI operation as the card released as only UEFI at first.

 

I've used just about every ATI / AMD GPU to date (except current high end).  Now, if you were complaining about AMD's "final" drivers for older cards, then yeah I'd agree with you on driver problems.  No reason a 290x shouldn't be at least usable today, and with MODDED drivers they are.  But their current gen lineups?  No, they take pretty good care of ironing out MOST issues on current generation in their drivers.  Not saying it doesn't happen, but actual driver problems tend to be more rare than a google search might lead you to believe.

[bonami2]

Thank you both for the help! Did not know for the physx thing did see the option in ddu and the file in some window folder.

Motherboard up to date. It a Sapphire 6800xt Pulse but doesn't seem to have any bios update.

 

Did not even think about the bios switch just checked it so small i never saw it 

 

For some reason it run stable now. I put TDP to default in Msi afterburner. Maybe my card is borderline stable at stock clock.

Gonna try the other bios right now

 

I tried running rage mode in amd control center with default setting and it was doing the same thing when brand new. 

 

Sorry for hijacking thread il report back in some days.

 

 

 

[PCSarge]

1 hour ago, bonami2 said:

Thank you both for the help! Did not know for the physx thing did see the option in ddu and the file in some window folder.

Motherboard up to date. It a Sapphire 6800xt Pulse but doesn't seem to have any bios update.

 

Did not even think about the bios switch just checked it so small i never saw it 

 

For some reason it run stable now. I put TDP to default in Msi afterburner. Maybe my card is borderline stable at stock clock.

Gonna try the other bios right now

 

I tried running rage mode in amd control center with default setting and it was doing the same thing when brand new. 

 

Sorry for hijacking thread il report back in some days.

 

 

 

its all good dude, we're here to help