Drivers & Software

[danoded]

Ever since I built my new PC with these specs:

MSI X470 GAMING PRO Motherboard (Non-Carbon)

Ryzen 7 2700X

16 GB Corasir Vengeance LPX 3200MHz CL16

SAMSUNG NVMe M.2 970 EVO 500GB

And installed my previous graphics card from my old the system, the SAPPHIRE 7870 GHz Edition GPU, I have only had problems when I have a graphics card drier installed. On Windows 7, my system will run fine for a duration of 1 minute to 1 hour before I am given a DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL BSOD error. On Windows 8.1, my PC will freeze and requires a physical restart in order to use my system again. This also happens with a duration between 1 minute to 1 hour. These issues do not exist when I have no graphics driver installed.

On Windows 8.1 I have tried the 17.4.4 driver only, on Windows 7 I have tried 18,17,16 and 13, all to no avail.

I have tested my RAM using Memtest, no errors were shown after 1hr30mins+ of running. I have absolutely zero problems without the graphics card driver installed.

My GPU was working with zero problems on in my old system running Windows 7. I have disabled any extra USB peripherals yet the issue still persists. I have no overclocks, and have tested my RAM with and without the XMP profile enabled, the issue still persists.

[bruceadk]

I have almost the same system and having same problem. My graphics card is a Sapphire Nitro R9 380 4gb DDR5. I have tried every video driver i could find and getting same results..

Windows 7 Ult.

MSI X470 Gaming Plus

AMD Ryzen 2700x

16GB Viper 4 3400 CL15

Samsung NVMe 970 EVO 250gb

[danoded]

bruceadk wrote:

I have almost the same system and having same problem. My graphics card is a Sapphire Nitro R9 380 4gb DDR5. I have tried every video driver i could find and getting same results..

Windows 7 Ult.

MSI X470 Gaming Plus

AMD Ryzen 2700x

16GB Viper 4 3400 CL15

Samsung NVMe 970 EVO 250gb

Hi bruceadk, this issue seems to be with the MSI motherboard itself and not with our systems. I have tried more things since I posted this question. I tried using Windows 10 with the 7870, but it did not work. On these versions of Windows they system simply freeze without any prior warning with no DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error. I also bought a new NVIDIA graphics card (GT 710 2GB) to see if the GPU was the issue, but the freezing has still persisted on both 8.1 and 10, regardless of whether NVIDIA drivers were installed or not. I'm guessing that you might experience the same if you tried 8.1 or 10 with your current setup.

I have contacted MSI support directly very recently about the motherboard and this what they mentioned I should do. The only thing new for me to try was clearing the CMOS, which did not work:

"...please firstly check if there are any obvious damages on the surface of the MB, also please clean the dust for a try. And have you installed a clean system on this MB directly? Also please clean the system by some antivirus software for a try. If it still cannot help, please change a ram to try. Before all of that, please clear the CMOS referring to MB manual."

I'm waiting for a reply back to see what they will do next. I'll create a new reply once I hear back from them.

[bruceadk]

danoded, thank you for the reply. Mine system has been up and running now for 2 days without it happening. I removed the video drivers, but kept the motherboard drivers and took an old nvidia gforce gtx 745 out of an old system and installed it with the newest drivers for it. So, at least it's up and running, can't play any games with this cheap card. I do get an error when i first boot into windows 7 that says the program RadeonSettings.exe has stopped working. but other than that it's working..

[danoded]

Nice that you got it working. With that error, did you use DDU to uninstall the drivers in safe mode? Looks like you may still have some AMD software installed on your system, or some registry entries. It's looking like I'll have to send my motherboard for an RMA from MSI's response.

[danoded]

Hi bruceadk,

The issue for my PC was with the 970 EVO SSD, which you also have. This may have been the cause of the freezing you experienced earlier.

[bruceadk]

How did you find it? Now that I think about it, that's the only thing that I didn't check. It doesn't do it with the Nvidia video card installed. I gave my son the R9 and I ordered a GTX 1060. It's really hard to troubleshoot something when AMD put all the drivers into one package. Thank you for getting back on this.. 

[danoded]

I booted into Windows 10 on a USB and checked how long the system lasted for in Task Manager, and it was 1hr30mins and it hadn't frozen. I then booted into Windows 10 on the SSD and it froze in 30mins. Funnily enough that was the only component I didn't check also. I contacted SAMSUNG Support and they suggested to do a Secure Erase using the SAMSUNG Magician tool for SSDs. So far it has appeared to work as I tested my system again and Windows 10 didn't freeze in over 2 hours, the longest I've seen it last in a long time, and I have seen a case of freezing since. I would suggest trying this in your case as well. Crazy that I have to do a Secure Erase on the SSD to get it to work, since a normal format didn't work. I'm also not sure if this is a temporary solution, but I hope it is permanent. I hope it works for you if you try this method and you're very welcome.

[danoded]

Just a quick update, the SSD froze again while I was in the process of over-provisioning the drive. I updated to the latest firmware in SAMSUNG Magician and I haven’t experienced any freezing in the few hours I’ve been using it on Windows 7 (the freeze occurred on this OS also). I’ll keep you updated on how my system runs.