The machine in question is an HP OEM branded tower with a Ryzen 7 1700 8-core CPU, and Radeon RX 550, running Windows 10. Before the described events occurred, this machine was running AMD Adrenalin, with the last update applied in late February. Basically current.
Three weeks ago, a patch update from Microsoft broke both the graphic drivers and the startup process for the OS, crashing the machine. This happened in the middle of the night, and by the time it was caught, it was irrecoverable. I had to restore to original factory image for the machine, which dates from 2018. After three weeks of slow work, here's where we're at -
OS Build / Ver - Windows 10 22H2 / 19045.2788
AMD SW Ver -
(A) "AMD Software" - 9.0.000.8
(B) "Radeon Settings" - 2018.0430.163828104
I am now back at the point where I need to add AMD Adrenalin back in. However there are a few significant obstacles -
(1) HP (the OEM) and Microsoft seem to think that the proper driver upgrade is to a driver only referred to by version number - 23.20.806.7424 (HP) or 26.20.14038.2009 (MSFT). Either of these break the machine, and this seems to be what caused the original problem.
(a) Further research in both HP and MSFT support forums indicate that these driver versions seem to correspond not to the RX 550 graphic card, but instead to a motherboard embedded AMD graphics chip, which the motherboard in this tower has never had.
(b) In other words, this seems to be an actual entry error in both MSFT and OEM specification and software update databases. This also means, what actually gets downloaded through their update tools may not even be what's indicated, but may be some completely different driver or software package.
(c) I can now with additional tools, block the update which caused the issue to begin with. However, I cannot seem to get anyone in their support forums to understand why this is a problem, or even acknowledge there's a problem to begin with.
(2) AMD Adrenalin and associated drivers for the RX 550 graphics card, cannot be safely installed.
(a) I cannot remove either of the "AMD Software" or "Radeon Settings" packages installed with the factory image without losing all graphics capability, followed by an unsuccessful restart. The startup process for the OS breaks up to 4 times in a row, followed by a move to the OEM recovery / repair screen. Attempted repair via Windows media created image on a USB drive is unsuccessful, leaving no choice but to go back to my current OS restore point on the local drive.
(b) Related to the above, there seems to be no documentation on these older software packages or how to safely remove them.
(c) Attempting to install AMD Adrenalin via a current downloaded driver or via the minimal setup / auto-detect package is also unsuccessful. This seems to be because the Factory Reset option doesn't recognize either of the "AMD Software" or "Radeon Settings" packages as software to be removed, and AMD Adrenalin is just installed over the top. Which also results in losing all graphics capability, followed by an unsuccessful restart. Wash, Rinse, Repeat.
Here's what I need -
(1) A method to safely remove the existing graphics driver packages, while at least maintaining basic display capability through the Mobo integrated VGA port. Ideally, without breaking the entire OS.
(2) A method to confirm those packages are completely removed after machine restart, so the AMD Adrenalin software and drivers can be installed without breaking the entire OS.
