Crashing after Catalyst Driver 10.12 Install

Hello all,

I am hoping I can call on your help once more to analyze some debugging info. I recently installed ATI Catalyst 10.12 drivers and now whenever my system is idle for too long, the screen just goes black but the monitor is still powered on and the system is unresponsive. I have my computer set to go to a blank screen saver at 15 minutes and lock the system but also power off the monitor at 15 minutes so essentially both happen at the same time. I have tried putting the time out to 1 minute and watch it happen but it doesn't happen. It seems to only be when I step away from my machine for an extended period.

I then have to force power off and power it back on. Windows does report some kind of error occurred and uploaded data to microsoft as well as dump the kernel memory to file so it doesn't look like a hardware failure where it just locked up but some kind of windows issue. I'm trying to determine if it is in fact the Catalyst 10.12 drivers causing the bug but I'm not good at looking at dump files.

The strange thing is that I can use my computer normally, play 3D games for hours, put the computer to sleep, wake it up. The problem only occurs if I leave it turned on but idle for too long. It's happened about 5 times in a row now so it's definitely consistent and reproducible.


- x86 (32-bit) or x64 ? x64
- the original installed OS on the system? Yes
- an OEM or full retail version? Full Retail
- OEM = came pre-installed on system
- Full Retail = you purchased it from retailer

- What is the age of system (hardware)? Within 2 years, most components within a year
- What is the age of OS installation (have you re-installed the OS?) Reinstalled within the last 3 months due to new motherboard.

Well I do use Daemon Tools regularly so I'd rather not just get rid of it.

My video card is ASUS ATI 5970
I got the driver directly from ATI when it came out, the 10.12 driver.

To install, I did remove 10.11 using the uninstall method then used driver sweeper from safe mode.

I usually update every month when ATI releases a new driver because it helps with games etc. ASUS doesn't update their drivers regularly and are usually a bit behind. Haven't had a problem until 10.12. Plus you can't buy an ATI video card, just a branded one with an ATI chip, at least not that I know of.

Nice to see though that the video driver caused the crash.

Surprisingly enough... I set my screen saver time out to 14 minutes and monitor off to 15 minutes instead of both at 15 minutes and now it works without crashing the system... weird. I'll just wait for the 11.01 drivers when they come out from ATI.

nickp85 said:

Surprisingly enough... I set my screen saver time out to 14 minutes and monitor off to 15 minutes instead of both at 15 minutes and now it works without crashing the system... weird. I'll just wait for the 11.01 drivers when they come out from ATI.

I've the same problem as you, but instead use A120 instead of DT. The funny thing is it as Lemur suggested sptd.sys being the culprit. I've did testing for some while to narrow down the driver issue. I did update to 1.75 sptd.sys but it still does a BSOD. Seems some of the issues in 10.12 are related to when the monitor goes into sleep mode then it freezes the PC on my W7 x64. I rolled back to 10.10 for the time being as I couldn't reinstall 10.11 for some reason as it won't detect the drivers for some strange reason or another. In any case, it seems you've figured out a way to fix it by just changing a mere minute of the sleep mode on your PC? I never have screensaver enabled so I know it is the sleep mode/power saver function of windows that is cause the 10.12 drivers to scream. Which is AMDs side of course.

I have the same exact issue with my Asus EAH6850 card. I fixed it by removing catalyst 10.12 and installing 10.10e hotfix. (10.11) does not support the 68xx series. I also sent a support email to ATI letting them know about this issue.

I'm running a Q6600, 6 Gigs DDR2 ram, Windows 7 64bit. I also checked all my temperatures. All ok. It is definitely a driver issue.