PC Drivers & Software

[blueo]

I bought a ATI Radeon Pitcairn HD 7850 2GB DX11.1 and installed it monhts ago. Updated driver and it worked fine.

Had a couple of occasions where I turned on my computer and had a black screen. Plugged VGA into motherboard and got it to work - went onto the device manager and saw that the driver listed for my card had changed from the 7850 one to ATI Radeon 3000 graphics. Last time I installed several different packages and it worked but in the last week it has reverted again. Whenever I try to get it to update it just stays on the 3000 version. I tried reinstalling it by following the part of the AMD website where it asks for your card and gives you the package to download but this has not worked.

I'm running Windows 10. 64bit

to add:

I used the DDU tool to remove everything and when i tried to reintall, I got a message saying "Components already installed".

edit 2:

I went onto BIOS and switched it to PEG. Loaded up and my card still says the Windows basic adapter. Tried installing the Minimal set up Radeon software and once it had finished and scanned it came up with "Components are already installed" again. Tried shutting down and plugging in through my GPU and got black screen.

Went back on and updated my device, selecting the location of the downloaded AMD drivers program and each time it installed the ATI Radeon 3000 graphics driver. I can't see any way of manually updating it with the correct software.

[black_zion]

Disable the IGP in BIOS.

[blueo]

Hi, thank you for the reply.

I went onto BIOS and switched it to PEG. Loaded up and my card still says the Windows basic adapter. Tried installing the Minimal set up Radeon software and once it had finished and scanned it came up with "Components are already installed" again. Tried shutting down and plugging in through my GPU an black screen.

Really not sure what to do with this...

[black_zion]

You need to disable the IGP, not simply switch the default order.

[benchart]

If your GPU only gives you a black screen probably it died.
And obviously if you connect your VGA cable to the motherboard IGP card, it's going to use your ATI 3000 and it's drivers.

Only connecting your VGA to the your GPU will enable it, but again, if you have a black screen possibly it died.
1. If you can you can try out other ports like HDMI (try to connect to a TV or something).
2. Try to get friend to lend you a GPU just to check if it works with your friend's card (just to make sure it's a GPU problem and not a motherboard slot problem).
3. If it still don't work, you might have your self a dead card, it happens unfortunaly, I've already lost 2 nvidias and 1 ATi, out of nowhere, I wasn't even gaming and they died on me, or got image corruption.
Cheers

EDIT: If you can also try the @black_zion advice, dispite this wasn't suppose to be necessary.

[blueo · Accepted solution]

This morning I opened up my tower, took out the GPU and the battery to reset the CMOS. Put everything back in and restarted. It actually loaded, recognising my GPU as another bit of hardware. I right clicked on the device in device manager and told it to install updates. It installed the correct driver and now it's functional. What the hell happened?

[benchart]

Damn forgot about that one, sorry.
Bios don't usually freak out, so you were a victim of something rare, or not! XD

The thing, Bios/Uefi when you switch between GPUs (I mean Dedicated and IGP and vice-versa), sometimes and I never understood why, sometimes Bios gets stuck to one option, in your case, it was your IGP, since your dedicated didn't worked out.

By performing a Bios Reset, Bios is forced to perform a full run to check everything, and it actually managed to go search for your GPU and power it up.

You are far from the first guy that happened, this, altough, like I said, it usually happens when you switch between GPUs, the thing is, you did that, but only after you started to have problems, so for some reason you bios probably had some problem out of nowhere and you got that problem.

Anyway, I'm happy that everything is fine now.
I guess both of us learned something today.
Thanks..

[blueo]

Thank you for the explanation and your help. I appreciate your patience.

[benchart]

Hi there, just one thing I didn't understood, currently, do you have the VGA connected to your motherboard or to your GPU?
I have the same card as you

[blueo]

My VGA or whatever connection it is, is connected via my motherboard, not my GPU.

[benchart]

So, basically you have your VGA Connector (the cable that connects the monitor to the PC) connected to the motherboard, it is obvious that it's going to use your IGP (integrated card) and will always revert to the ATI 3000 series.

You need to connect your cable to your GPU ports, not to the motherboard ones!
If it isn't working on your GPU probably your GPU is dead or you have a problem with it.
Cheers

[blueo]

The reason I have it connected to my motherboard is, as with the last time this happened - I can't see anything on my screen while its plugged into my GPU to sort the issue out while the correct GPU software isnt installed.

Last time I was able to find the correct software, install it and device manager went from the 3000 driver and working only though the motherboard to a black screen while plugged into the motherboard. When I connected back through the GPU it showed the correct software an everything was fine... until now.

When I say not plugged in, I mean that it is installed onto the motherboard but I am using the motherboards on VGA output to display something on the screen.