PC Drivers & Software

[angryuserx]

Hi,

I'm new here and have massive problems with my rx 5700 xt!

About three weeks ago I replaced my old Radeon Card by a new RX 5700 XT and had occasional crashes thenceforth. Mostly it was a black screen. Rarely a frozen screen (once or twice). Mostly the PC rebooted itself, sometimes I had to reset. It occured once a day on avarage.

I tried different drivers (all 20.x) and disabled the hardware acceleration of the browser. (was suggested somewhere)

I already thought the latter solved the problem (no crash for maybe two days, I think), but then I had a crash again and ran into severe problems!

I think the problem was, that there was a second crash when the PC was rebooting. The Asus logo during boot process was frozen and I had to reset.

Now I it seems my Windows C:/Users directory is gone or corrupted. When I try to login I get the message, that my user profile can't be loaded and I can't login. (I have only one user.)

Rebooting did not solve the problem. So I wanted to go to safe mode to try a suggestion of changing a registry key, which should fix the problem.

Now I have to mention, that I maybe can't mention every problem, since there are so many...

Firstly, the safe mode needed about half an hour to login. Windows even ran out of the nice messages, bridging time. It just ended up saying that it takes longer than expected...

After a while login was "successful". The safe mode is virtually not usable. The screen is flickering rapidly, like constantly updating. There is no usable task bar, no icons, start button not working. Somehow I could use the taskmanager to start the explorer, a console or the regedit. System settings are also not starting. The complete C:/Users directory disappeared together with some other directories like AppData.

Creating a new user did not work. The mentioned registry modifikation also did not work. (Set DWORD State to zero in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList )

So my questions are:

1. Does anyone know this problem or has any suggestion, how to solve it? I know it's probably not the graphic card anymore causing this problem. But probably the card initially provoked it. That's why I'm here.

2. Assuming I solve the Windows problem, how can I stop the graphic card from crashing? From my internet research I learned it's probably not the hardware but some software problem with the drivers. Since I just bought the card, I think about sending it back. (The next one probably would be a Nvidia even if I don't like their prices...)

Here I also want to mention that I'm really angry with AMD that obviously after, I don't know, over one year they still haven't fixed these problems. I found several articles in online magazines addressing this. It's not like I couldn't wait and bought a just-released graphic card...

About my hardware ( I had to look for the damn boxes, since I can't look it up on OS...):

Ryzen 5 1600

Asus Prime B350-Plus

2x8GB G.Skill F4-2400C15D

2x8GB G.Skill F4-2133C15D

(A RAM-check with Windows mdsched.exe showed no problems.)

Powercolor Radeon RX 5700 XT Red Dragon

Thanks in advance!

J

[elstaci]

You didn't mention which Windows version you have installed.

But in Windows 10, if you restart the computer 3 times in a row when Windows is starting but before reaching Windows Desktop, it should automatically go into Diagnostics Menu.

Click on Adanced Menu and then Troubleshoot Menu and click on Restart Windows issues. Once it finishes see if it fixed your problem.

If you can't get access to the Troubleshoot Menu then boot up with your Windows 10 Installation disk and use that to fix your Startup issue or either restore your computer to an earlier Restore point or restore a System Backup if you made one.

If none of the above fixes your problem and you are able to reach your Windows Desktop, Run the WIndows 10 Installation disk to reinstall Windows using the Ingrade upgrade method. This method will reinstall all your 3rd party apps and configurations you have made while installing a new Windows folder.

You can get rid of Windows.old by using Disk Cleanup (remove System Files) for Drive C:.

[angryuserx]

Thanks for your fast reply!

About the version: I couldn't tell you, because I can't loggin. In safe mode I can't access any system information. So all I can say is, that I once installed some kind of Win 10 Education (maybe five years ago) and normally updated only necessary updates.

I've read, that some updates cause problems like missing user data, but never that severe. Also there was no update directly before the problem occured.

Meanwile I've checkt the SSD via a USB-Knoppix and couldn't find any of the missig data. Also there was no windows.old file or folder.

Furthermore:

Diagnostic mode failed with the message it couldn't repair the system.

Repairing with the Windows DVD failed, same blurry message.

Loading restore point failed. Message said I should choose a system, though there was nothing to choose.

Rollback failed.

Even loading a system image from January failed. Here I have to mention, that meanwhile (in January) I expanded my system partition (I've spared part of the SSD for another OS I never installed.) I vaguely remember that during this process the boot sector was changed from MBR to GPT, which was probably the reason I made the system image. Hence there was a problem in the first try with UEFI vs. BIOS which I solved by switching everything to UEFI in the boot menue. This made the error vanish and the recovery startet only to stop after few minutes with the very meaningful error code "0x81000036" ...

To cut a long story short, I'm mentally ready to leave the sinking ship, meaning I'm going to reinstall Windows completely. (after I could decide on which of the many versions is best...)

Here I have a new question. You mentioned this:

"Run the WIndows 10 Installation disk to reinstall Windows using the Ingrade upgrade method. This method will reinstall all your 3rd party apps and configurations you have made while installing a new Windows folder."

How does this work? I start from the installation DVD/USB and choose update. Then all my programms (also those installed on C:?) will be installed again? Is "Ingrade" a typo or does it mean something I don't understand? Can I use any Windows 10 installation version? I was plannig to unplug the other disks (with most programms and data on it) during installation to keep them safe, and hoping that most of the programms would just start again after connecting the disks again with the fresh Windows. But if I got you right, your solution sounds tempting.

Either way I will have a working Windows again, but still the originally problem with the RX 5700 XT may persist. Before, I already removed the drivers completely and installed them again with no effect, so I have few hope that the problem of crashes will be vanished.

I've already searched for hours about this. Most solutions I've found advised to use older drivers, but they differed in the versions. So I thought, here at the source of everything... I could get best advises, maybe from some AMD-experts?

Thanks in advance!

[elstaci]

You can open a Online AMD Service Request (Official AMD SUPPORT) from here: https://www.amd.com/en/support/contact-email-form 

This is a User to User forum. Official AMD Support is the above link.

Before doing anything below reset your BIOS back to Factory Default using CMOS CLEAR (following the manual) to make sure a BIOS setting wouldn't cause an issue when installing Windows again.

Once I had a similar issue. Since I had a System Backup (same Windows version) not a Restore point. I first did a clean Windows Installation then I restored my System Backup using the Clean Windows OS. Thus I was able to recover my computer back to the way it was when I made the System Backup.

The Windows Ingrade upgrade only works when you are in the Windows Desktop. If you can't boot into Windows Desktop then you can't use this method.

But if you are able to boot into Windows Desktop, then just run the Windows Installation .exe file and it will automatically reinstall a new Windows folder with all your 3rd party apps. Plus it will CREATE at C:\Windows.old file of your old Windows folder.

Windows.old is only created after you successfully did a Windows Ingrade install via WIndows Desktop.