PC Drivers & Software

[mbaskett95]

Hello,

PC Specs are;

• CPU: AMD FX 8350
• GPU: MSI Radeon R9 390 8GB
• PSU: Corsair TX 650
• MOBO: Gigabyte GA 970A - DS3P
• RAM 2 X 4GB Corsair Vengenance
• OS: Windows 10 Pro
• Storage: 480GB Sandisk SDD

So I have been having a few weird things happen with my PC. Sometimes when I boot my PC it will POST, pass the motherboard screen and then go to a black screen. I'll power it off with the buttons on the case and it will restart again and eventually boot into windows and I can game on it.

The other day I downloaded the latest Radeon adrenaline driver for my GPU and it worked fine for a day or 2. Then I was playing World of Warcraft not even maxed out or anything, GPU wasn't hot and it was barely at 50% utilisation most of the time. Windows then throws out a critical driver error message and the PC restarts itself. I was a bit like "wtf". I Let it restart and then left it for a while. I then Booted up World of Warcraft Classic and it got to the loading screen for about 1 or 2 seconds then the screen goes black. I restarted the PC and then every time it got past the motherboard screen and a little windows loading sign, it would go to a black screen until I shut it off.

I tried to get it running for so many hours to no avail. I then made a windows bootable USB install drive and re installed windows on my PC. All was working fine and the computer gets into windows. I then went to install some drivers. When I got to the graphics driver for my graphics card, same thing happens. Computer completely goes to a black screen as its installing.

After that, I reboot the computer into safe mode and extract DDU into the computer using a USB drive. Ran DDU and cleaned all the AMD drivers off, ticked the box to stop windows applying updates and restarted the computer. The computer boots up fine. The graphics card shows up as "Microsoft Basic Display Adapter" in device manager.

After this, I go to install some windows updates. I watched as each update installed. I saw that when an update called "Advanced Micro devices inc, display" installed, the computer went to a black screen again. I then repeated the above steps, booted into save mode, ran DDU, etc, and got back into windows without any graphics drivers installed to the graphics card.

So now it seems that any type of graphics card update to the PC makes the screen go to black. I have no idea what's going on and really need some help. I'm studying at the moment and this is my only computer. I want to make it work some how. Every thread that I've seen with a similar issues there is either no update on the thread from the user with a workable solution that they found, or they just buy a new graphics card. I want to keep this card hopefully

Thanks for reading!

EDIT: I have also tried updating using different versions of the latest adrenaline drivers. Latest one, recommended one, etc etc

EDIT 2: I just tried to update again, this time by disconnecting my Ethernet cable on boot and choosing fresh install on the Radeon software install. Black screen happened so I went an sat on the sofa and left the black screen on. Eventually I heard the fans revving up really fast and stopping again on the GPU. I then put my hand on the graphics card and it was really hot to touch

[indub]

I think your card is probably fine.  Similar story here.  I haven't been able to update my 390x drivers since 18.12.1.1, black screen reboot.  Also noticed a couple days ago I have not been able to update windows 10 feature updates since version 2004 release in May, I'm still on windows 10 feature 1909.  My old amd drivers were preventing the window feature updates.  With the amd drivers removed I was able to install the newest windows feature update 20H2, but then trying to install amd drivers again (even 18.12.1.1) would black screen.  And yep, letting it sit a few mins that way would rev the fan up.  I thought my 390x might have finally bit the dust from all of the update attempts.  Fortunately I made a disk image prior to the windows update and went back to windows 1909 with amd 18.12.1.1 and no issue, back to normal.  You may be in a similar situation.  If you recently updated windows to a new feature update then try rolling back if possible.  Unfortunately it could also be a bad card but if you visually inspect it and there's no blown capacitors or darkened spots then its probably okay and more likely a driver/windows/pc bios compatibility issue.

Do you have an HP?  I have a HP Envy desktop.  Someone else posted on this forum recently that HP bios may be the problem.  HP hasn't updated bios for my pc in almost 3 years, I doubt HP is going to update bios for a discontinued unsupported product.  

[indub]

Check this thread, a lot of good info there. 

[mbaskett95]

Hey thanks for the reply. 

I did a fresh install of windows as I thought it would solve the black screen issue I have so right now it’s at the latest version, 20H2. I completely wiped the ssd when I reinstalled windows so I’m not sure if I have any way of going back to previous versions of windows 10? Do you know if I can?

Thanks 

[mbaskett95]

Also no I don’t have an HP. My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA 970a DS3P rev 1.0. There hasn’t been a bios update for this motherboard in years.. 🤷‍♂️ 

[indub]

I don't think there's any official way to download old windows 10 iso files.  There are unofficial ways.  Here's a 1909 iso and a 2004 iso.  There's a bunch in the archive.  Try the windows version you remember it last working along with the amd driver you know worked, which you can download from guru3d.  Probably best to make sure windows is up to date (without updating the optional windows feature updates) before you install the amd drivers and software.  Time consuming process but it's worth checking unless you have money to burn for a new gpu.  You should consider making disk images.  I run a few per year to an external hard drive using Macrium Reflect.  Highly recommended.  

Hope this helps!

But, if you still get black screen after all of that then your card is probably bad.   

[mbaskett95]

Just an update on how things are going so far. Reverted windows back to 1909 and tried to install the driver you are using just to give it a shot and see if it would work for me. Sadly the screen went to black again :(

I've taken the graphics card out of the PC and reapplied thermal paste and inspected the circuity board and everything in it. There is absolutely no signs of anything blown or fried or damage. I really am mystified as to what the issue could be.

It really is a bummer D:

[indub]

Sorry to hear that.  I'm still not convinced your card is bad.  There are too many stories like this with AMD cards the past few years, including my own, but I don't know what else you can really do.  I guess if you have the time maybe keep trying different generation of amd drivers (17.x, 18.x, 19.x, 20.x) while windows feature 1909 is still installed and see if there's any takers.

[indub]

Well I give up. Thought mine was back in action but get home today and black screen every restart.  I’m reloading my image from windows 20H2 and moving on from my 390x.  Doesn’t seem like a card fault though.  Sucks to buy another after only 5 years but that seems about right for my past GPU’s. Too many issues with my 390x the past 2 years. Going to look for a nvidia gtx 980ti. Much more reliable (hardware and software) and better rated compared to the 390s. Should be around the same cost by now I hope. 

Edit 1 hr later:

Back on 20h2 and no black screen yet running amd 18.12.1.1.  Been about 20 minutes so far running different programs and now writing this.  This is weird.  It works when it wants to.  

[mbaskett95]

Ahh night mare man. What are your full specs btw?

I have left it for now I think I'm gonna try update my motherboard and cpu, then if its the card ill update the video card later on.

Let me know how you get on with it 

[indub]

• CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K (Skylake) 4.0 GHz Quad Core
• GPU: AMD Radeon R9 390X (GDDR5) (8 GB)
• PSU: 600W or 650W, can't remember
• MOBO: Pegatron/HP Thimphu 2B4B
• RAM 8 GB (2x4 GB) DDR4 PC4-17000
• OS: Windows 10
• Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD

Tis the nightmare before xmas, lol.

No issue all of last night, gaming streaming etc.  I'll update if that changes again and how a different card works if I go that route.  Let me know where you end up as well

[mbaskett95]

Did some more troubleshooting with an old NVidia card that my dad had. The card didn't work at first so we baked it with a heat gun and it worked! It was able to install drivers no problem. I think this was proof enough for us that the r9 390x card had probably died and so we ordered an rx 580 off amazon that night since they were cheap at about £150.

I plugged it in and it installed drivers no problems. Every single problem I had with this PC has been corrected (touch wood). No more hangs and freezes that I used to get before my GPU fully died, and my CPU seems to be running a lot lot cooler in games. Before it would run at 70 degrees sometimes on a barely demanding game. Now its down to a constant 45-50 degrees.

[ScornfulWizard]

I've already posted this message in one other topic, but I think it'll fit in right here too.

The symptoms sound very similar to the issue from an older thread on here (and it's still going, btw) - Black screen with R9 270X . Actually, there seems to be quite a number of threads like that.

Although it is about R9 270X, it seems to be a rather common problem with Radeon cards in general. The reasons/causes of that kind of malfunction with black/green/grey screen remain unclear, unfortunately. Some of the suggested solutions work for some people, while many others don't... at the end of the day, I've seen many people claim to have decided to buy/get a different graphics card - from nVidia that is. It is a pity AMD doesn't really have any presence here to communicate with the users :smileyfrustrated:


I highly suspect the Adrenalin drivers (all of them) as one of the probable causes. I'd been sitting for a long time with old Win 8.1 drivers of version 17.4.4. doing just fine, but some months ago I decided to install the newer ones using Win 7's from AMD (since, apparently, you can install them safely to Win 8/8.1, but manually). It was fine for months, but one time I tried playing a game and my PC froze on grey screen after about 2 hours of playing. Restarting Win 8.1 wasn't possible after this - constant frozen black/green screens. You can see more of my story in that thread on the page 11.