Issues with AMD Crimson Software, GPU drivers refuse to install.

Mellon Head said:

A couple of things that I can think of...

1. Does the Crimson Control Panel load? If so, have to tried to update from within Crimson?
2. You say your drivers are 16.9.2, are they still installed?
3. Have you turned off the Intel HD internal card in BIOS? Is that possible?
4. Have you tried to update your drivers using a version one down from the newest ones, just to see if they will install? Perhaps there is a problem with the driver package installer on the newest set of drivers. I haven't tried to upgrade recently, but did have a problem with a recent driver pack, and had to roll back until a newer set came out.
5. Have you tried reseating your graphics card, and checking that the power connections are secure?

1. Crimson Control Panel actually loads just fine. Attempting to update within Crimson only gets me the same result as downloading the driver package from AMD's site.

2. 16.9.2 drivers are definitely installed. As seen here.


3. I don't think I can actually turn off the Intel HD internal card in the BIOS, but I will check later.

4. I do believe I attempted to roll back drivers and the GPU drivers still would not install, but I will give that a shot. I've read about at least one instance where someone rolled back (it was likely with a clean install following DDU) and successfully installed later drivers.

5. Yes, I've attempted reseating and reconnecting the card. I can say with certainty that my GPU has no connection issues otherwise, I would have some trouble playing any games.

Mellon Head said:

I guess now I'm a little confused. You have 16.9.2 installed, but are trying to install 16.11, right? And you've tried to uninstall 16.9.2 and upgrade, but it is not installing the new driver?

Will 16.9.2 uninstall at all? I don't quite understand how you've tried to reinstall the drivers and failed, but still have 16.9.2 on your machine after using DDU and the AMD Uninstall Utility. Did you reinstall 16.9.2?

Sorry, I should have been a bit clearer about this. There was a trick that did allow me to update to the 16.9.2 drivers from September 22nd, and I was trying to remember what it was. Then I recalled it while typing this up. It involved going through the Device Manager and using the "Update Driver Software" option, and pointing this toward the driver package for my GPU. Here's a shot with some leftover text from the last time I did this with the 16.9.2 drivers.


It's a strange workaround. And I know this also doesn't answer how the Crimson Control Panel is installed right now. It may have been done through a similar fashion as above.

Suppose this should now be a matter of finding out why drivers won't install normally. I'm changing the thread title to reflect this.

An Update. A good one. I've found the cause of my issues and a solution that I can confirm has worked.

Because these issues first happened during a process of installing a mass of Windows Updates following a fresh Windows 7 installation, I always had a feeling it was a Windows issue and not a hardware issue. I just didn't know where to start. Today, I installed a Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 480 4GB and still had the same issues with drivers, so I now knew for certain it's not a GPU issue. Turns out my suspicions were correct.

This AMD thread has someone with the same issues and an actual fix.
MS KB3125574 (Win7 SP1 rollup) will lead uninst... | Community

MS KB3125574 (apparently a Windows 7 SP1 rollup) was the culprit. OF COURSE it was a specific Windows Update. This caused AMD's driver packages to not even detect a GPU that was actually plugged in, caused Windows to also not detect a connected GPU, and caused BSODs when attempting to update drivers in nearly any fashion.

I uninstalled KB3125574, used AMD's Autodetect utility, and it quickly found my new RX 480. With that good sign, I went ahead and used DDU to clean out any AMD drivers for a fresh install, started AMD's latest driver package, and was finally greeted by this screen.



This nightmare is over, and I'm now enjoying gorgeous games at fast speeds. I'm updating the thread title so others that have this problem can find this solution. Thanks for the help anyway, Mellon Head.