PC Drivers & Software

[BenjaminSchultz]

Recently I've been having a problem with my graphics drivers for my RX 470. Windows 10 keeps telling me to restart my computer to finish installing a device "Pci Bus". Whenever it decides to do this, my AMD Adrenalin installation breaks and produces the pa-300 error code, preventing me from opening it, stating that my Adrenalin edition is not compatible with my current graphics driver. It says for me to check if I have any other versions of Adrenalin installed, but I'm not sure how to do that. Reinstalling Adrenalin and the drivers with factory reset enabled restores functionality temporarily, but the Pci Bus notification shows up again inevitably. 

I've looked around the internet for solutions to no avail. I've factory reset and reinstalled my graphics drivers (and Adrenalin entirely), I've gone through the Windows 10 device manager to manually select a driver to install, I've set my Windows 10 installation to not automatically update device drivers, but nothing is working.

This is stressing me out far more than I probably should worry since I'm always paranoid when it comes to computer stuff. If I could have some help soon, it would be greatly, greatly appreciated.
An explanation of the problem itself would also be appreciated so I can better understand this instead of being blind and scared.

[BenjaminSchultz]

Please help me, I don't want to be left in the dark like this.

[cpurpe91]

What is your hardware configuration?

[BenjaminSchultz]

ASUS Strix X470-F motherboard, Ryzen 5 2600X processor, 16gb RAM (task manager says 1067 mhz), Radeon RX470 graphics card, uncertain what power supply I have at the moment but I don't think it would've been the problem if it's been going this long without this issue, and Windows 10 Pro.

[cpurpe91]

Do you have the chipset drivers installed?

[BenjaminSchultz]

Yes, although I think they might be pretty outdated by this point. I'll look into it.

[BenjaminSchultz]

After checking AMD SMBus in device manager, it claims I have no driver installed. If I check the drivers tab it says I have a driver installed, but it seems to be several years old. Checking the drivers on AMD says the most recent driver was released 11/21/22.

Would an out of date chipset driver cause a problem like this? Around the internet I've also seen recommendations of fully reinstalling my graphics card or reseating it. 
I'll keep the updating idea noted.

[BenjaminSchultz]

Interestingly I've also noticed that my computer seems to run fine (for the most part) after it claims to set up the Pci Bus now, but it does still break AMD Adrenalin as it seems to be expecting a different driver.
Sometimes there's a screen flicker, but it's rather rare.

[cpurpe91]

My pc only ever prompted me with the Pci bus message after I uninstalled using DDU. Maybe someone else has some info but for me reinstalling my GPU drivers fixed it. Sorry I can't be of more assistance. 

[BenjaminSchultz]

Thanks for having a look at this problem at least, I was waiting for like a week for someone to say anything. 
I'll probably try reseating the card or fully reinstalling it, and if that doesn't work I'll look into a chipset driver update. If any of this solves it I'll be back to say so, but until then just assume I'm still kinda dealing with this.

[BenjaminSchultz]

So after another Windows 10 update I decided to reinstall my AMD Adrenalin again and so far in the past few days I haven't had the notification pop up again... I'm not marking this as solved just yet, may wait another day or so to make sure nothing happens.

[Stanmore]

I had the same error message on installing the latest driver but that was a few days ago and have not noticed any issues.

I did reinstall the latest chipset drivers just in case.

SMBus driver is 5.12.0.38. Dated 15/Sep/2022.

[Stanmore]

I fixed mine - decided to go into Device Manager and check drivers for the device. Did a right click and Update Driver and Windows did indeed install a newer driver. Reboot and the issue is gone.

It was the High Definition Audio Bus (under System Devices) with the issue. Not SMBus.

Windows Update itself did not locate a driver but the manual process did.

[BenjaminSchultz]

It's back! It's back after a week, dang it!
Graaah!
This is so dang annoying, why does it seem like everything is going on the fritz nowadays?
Ugh. It hasn't auto-reset itself yet, but we'll see about that soon enough. 

[BenjaminSchultz]

I THINK I FOUND SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
I don't think it's anything with my graphics card or hardware, I think it's just Windows installing its own driver even though I have specifically told it to NOT automatically update this stuff.

I found a post on the Guru3D forums, It's even got the same driver version as the one that installs onto my system! It seems to be almost the exact same issue. I'll have to look into it more deeply and see if I can get anything out of it, but it looks like more complicated computer wizardry. Dang it, Microsoft!

Here's the link to the forum post in question for anyone else who might want to take a look.
https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/unknown-amd-driver-is-taking-over-my-computer.445997/

[BenjaminSchultz]

After pausing Windows updates on my PC, it seems to have stopped trying to push the driver update, but I don't understand why this is a problem in the first place. There should just be an understandable way to stop Windows from pushing drivers to my computer, so I can choose what I want to use. I don't want to have to remember to pause updates every week or month, since maybe there are other updates I want, just not the drivers. Like, what if they push some driver that breaks my favorite games?

I do see there's some more complex method of turning off graphics driver updates on my system in that Guru3D forum post I sent earlier, but I'm not particularly confident in my computer wizardry abilities, or you could just straight up call me paranoid.

Dang it, Microsoft.

[BenjaminSchultz]

New potential solution!
Editing my group policy to not include driver updates may also work, I will have to see. Will not mark this as solved yet until I know for certain.

Conveniently found on these forums, too. Here's a link to the post in question.
https://community.amd.com/t5/drivers-software/amd-drivers-keep-getting-reset-with-every-windows-upda...

Note that this may not work with Home edition unless you specifically download and set up the group policy editor, from what I can tell.

[BenjaminSchultz]

It seems either this or pausing the windows updates worked, and it hasn't happened in a few days again... I'll give it a couple more days and mark this as solved if the problem doesn't crop up.

[cpurpe91]

I was just about to tell you about the GPEDIT solution. Nice to know you found it. I have gotten to the point where, whenever installing Windows, I make the GPEDIT change. I manage the drivers for my system because Windows doesn't know how to. LOL. Good luck, and I hope this fixed the issue.

[BenjaminSchultz]

What the hell!? The driver came back after I tried to reinstall 22.5.1 again! I don't understand, I'm going to have to try this again.

[BenjaminSchultz]

I went the nuclear option and used DDU to uninstall it all, and I think that may have worked.
RIP all of those playtime metrics in Adrenalin, oh well.

[BenjaminSchultz]

It was probably just still on my system after being installed so long ago.