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A bugs of the latter AMD drivers – Adrenaline 23.2.2 and 23.2.1 – can prevent Windows PCs from booting. It is talked about in a long article in PCWorldin which, in addition to discussing the problem, there is good news: not only that AMD engineers they managed to trace the potential cause of the bugbut they also identified a “workarounds” to bring affected PCs back to life (without formatting them) while they continue to work on developing a fix definitive.
But what happened? Brad Chacos, executive editor of PCWorld, explains it to us. After having installed a custom Radeon RX 7900 XT on a workstation with Windows 10 and proceeded to delete the remnants of other drivers (NVIDIA) with DDU – Display Driver Uninstaller, Chacos went to the AMD site, he Downloaded Adrenalin 23.2.2 WQHL drivers and installed them ticking clean install instead of upgrade. And, based on what he then reconstructed, it was precisely that choice, along with a silent Windows update that occurred in the background without his knowledgeto transform the mighty PC into a “brick”.
“Everything was fine, until the software said I had to restart my PC to complete the driver installation. After restarting, my system showed the MSI BIOS splash page as usual, but when trying to load windows it immediately got a blue screen of death (BSOD), with the error code ‘Inaccessible Boot Device’. The system then started an endless loop of BSOD – reboot – BSOD – reboot without initiating automatic repair attempts or presenting me with the usual Windows troubleshooting options”.
After installing a reference Radeon RX 7900 XT, after two cycles BSOD – reboot the system tried to self-repair the install, making it worse. “Instead of fixing the problem, selecting ‘Startup Repair’ made it worse. At the end, the screen went blank and was unresponsive at all (while it was still on). Every time I tried to boot up the PC I would see the Windows loading circle spin after the BIOS screen for a brief moment, then revert to infinite darkness,” Chacos writes.
So, taken by desperation, the editor replaced the AMD GPU with a GeForce RTX 4070 Ti and then an Intel Arc A750, without however having success. Contacted AMD, managed to bring the PC back to life without reinstalling the operating system.
After a series of unsuccessful tests, AMD engineers they have found the right workaround: “When the BIOS splash screen appears immediately after turning on the PC, press the power button to try to get Windows to force an automatic recovery attempt. Tried four times without success. I was told to keep it up, that would eventually work. And after fifteen tries, she did!”.
Apparently that’s all a matter of timing: Pressing the power button in the fraction of a second between the BIOS options disappearing and the Windows circle appearing allowed the system to start attempting self-recovery. Back in the Windows Recovery Tools menu, Chacos has selected ‘System Restore’ and immediately after a restore point that brought the PC stuck in limbo back to life.
AMD did dozens of attempts to recreate the problem in the lab because it’s a rare bug. “We have reproduced a problem that can occur in an extremely small number of cases if a PC update occurs while installing AMD Software Adrenalin Edition and we are actively investigating.”
“We suggest users to make sure all system updates are applied or paused before installing the driver e that the ‘Reset to factory settings’ option is unchecked during the driver installation process. We are committed to resolving issues as quickly as possible and encourage users to submit issues from AMD Software Adrenalin Edition via the bug reporting tool.”
In short, if you need to update AMD drivers to the latest version, do not check that box during installation, at least not until a driver release with a corrective comes out. Also, be careful with Windows and its updates, sometimes they are applied without you knowing anything about it and at the wrong time possible.
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