Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

AMD’s latest drivers are causing havoc on Windows PCs

Alex Blake
By

AMD’s drivers don’t have the greatest reputation, with users and commentators often decrying their frequency and reliability. Well, here’s something else to add to the list: AMD’s latest Adrenalin 23.2.1 driver is apparently crashing Windows and causing serious boot issues. Oops.

Released just yesterday, the driver contains updates for AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 and 6000 graphics card families. It also added or improved support for the games Forspoken and Dead Space, as well as additional Vulkan extensions. However, its launch saw AMD users scrambling to log their frustrations across forums and social media.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX hovers over a raging fire.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

For instance, Twitter user @PrepperAssasin stated that the driver “Crashed my whole PC, now I have to set up Windows again from scratch.” Another user, @flyinghyur, lamented that the driver “bricked my Windows install.”

Recommended Videos

That’s not the kind of nasty surprise you want when installing a driver, and right now AMD has not responded to the complaints. On AMD’s website, the driver’s list of known issues mentions stuttering and crashes in a handful of games but makes no mention of serious Windows issues like those reported on Twitter.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!
Privacy Policy

A lengthy delay

Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD, pictured holding an AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card.
AMD

The problem is made worse by the long delay AMD users have faced for this driver. It’s been over two months since the last update, and the wait was so bad that two weeks ago, Frank Azor, AMD’s Chief Architect of Gaming Solutions and Marketing, had to take to Twitter to explain the situation. Looks like he might need to repeat the trick now.

According to the Twitter account of PC monitoring tool CapFrameX, the driver could be changing Windows BIOS settings, which in turn might lead to the crashes and boot problems users have been describing. If you’re suffering similar problems after installing AMD’s latest driver, try checking your BIOS settings before resorting to reinstalling Windows. Using Display Driver Uninstaller to roll back the driver could also help.

As well as the issues Windows users are experiencing with AMD’s latest release, the driver also seems to be wreaking havoc with Ayaneo’s portable gaming consoles as well. According to a post on the Ayaneo website, internal testing has shown that the latest AMD driver limits the VRAM on the Ayaneo 2 and Ayaneo Geek to 512MB. That’s a fraction of the 3GB or 6GB these consoles can be outfitted with, and it could lead to negatively impacted performance.

All in all, it hardly seems like the driver launch AMD fans were expecting, especially after waiting so long. Here’s hoping AMD can quickly roll out some fixes to put the problems right.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Alex Blake
Alex Blake
Computing Writer
In ancient times, people like Alex would have been shunned for their nerdy ways and strange opinions on cheese. Today, he…
How Nvidia and AMD could make Windows laptops feel like MacBooks
An ARM processor.

In an unexpected twist, Nvidia may soon make more than just some of the best graphics cards. Rumor has it that it's working on ARM-based processors for client PCs. It's not alone in this historic venture, either, because AMD is also said to be readying ARM CPUs.

According to a report from Reuters, both AMD and Nvidia are getting ready to launch ARM-based systems on a chip (SoCs) as early as 2025. The target market will be client PCs that run Windows, which has had a slow and troubled embrace of ARM architecture historically. After how successful such chips have been in Apple's own M1 and M2 silicon, though, it seems obvious that the transition to ARM will need to speed up in order for ARM-powered Windows laptops to truly compete.

Read more
AMD retracts its new gaming feature after it was getting players banned
Gamer using Discord on a gaming desktop PC.

AMD has released a new graphics driver update that disables its newly introduced Anti-Lag+ technology in all supported games. The latest graphics driver (23.10.2) is a follow-up to 23.10.1, which launched almost a week ago and introduced Anti-Lag+ for Counter-Strike 2.

AMD has confirmed via the official release notes that the reason for disabling the anti-lag tech is due to recent reports about certain online games that were identifying Anti-Lag+ as a hacking tool, which then resulted in player bans. AMD also said that it is actively working with game developers and hopes to find a solution to reenable Anti-Lag+ and reinstate gamers who were impacted by the anti-cheat bans.

Read more
If you have an AMD GPU, stay away from the latest Windows Update
Two AMD Radeon RX 7000 graphics cards on a pink surface.

A quick PSA: If you own one of AMD's best graphics cards and you like to tweak the settings, now is not a good time to download the latest Windows Update. According to users on the AMD forums, the KB5030310 update really doesn't agree with AMD's Adrenalin Control Panel. While it's not the end of the world, this isn't the first Windows update in the last few months that has caused problems.

It appears that every time people restart their PCs, their Adrenalin settings are all reset back to default. This means that any changes made to things like AMD's Anti-Lag or Hyper RX will disappear upon every boot. Fortunately, the graphics driver itself is unaffected.

Read more