11.6 WHQL BSOD Investigation

Hello all,
Thank you for the valuable information. I finally got the 11.6 drivers to work.

It was indeed the HDMI connection to a second monitor in my case. After several re-images and restores, I found this thread and tried the suggested solution; unplugging the HDMI+monitor. I haven't tried to plug the HDMI cable back in yet as I wanted to post my results.

My appreciated and thanks again.

System:
OS: Win7 Pro x64
MB: ASUS M4A89GTD Pro/USB3
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1055T
RAM: 4GB Corsair
Monitors: LG W2243T (DVI) + LG W2442PA (HDMI)
GPU: Sapphire (AMD) HD 6870
Main Hard Drive: OCZ Vertex II Sandforce, Microsoft AHCI drivers

 

This is great(?) news.
Now at least in general we know that something's wonky with AMD's HDMI support on 8.86x.

Anyone here care to point this out to Andrew?

 

I will , Yep its almost confirmed :thumbup: i have tried this on the same Proscan HDTV LCD wich causes BSOD using HDMI from the video card to the display HDMI , but if i use DVI from the Video card with an adapter for VGA to the VGA connection on the back of this display it works , but it does not look as crisp and brilliant as HDMI connection. It only happens with whql 11.6 , this bug does not appear in 11.5 drivers and below using the same display and HDMI conection.

So far:

The Bad:
HDMI to HDMI = BSOD
HDMI to HDMI + another Display using DVI = BSOD
Mini Port To HDMI = BSOD
Mini Port to HDMI + another display = BSOD

------------------------------------------------

The Good:
DVI to DVI = No BSOD
DVI to VGA via dapter = No BSOD

 

I am having problems installing the 11.6 drivers. I get a BSOD during the installation process right after the part were the screen goes black for a moment.

Before I had the 11.5 installed and had no problem, but I had a problem with installing a set of updates for win7 and had to reformat. With a fresh install I decided to try the new 11.6, but they won't install. I uninstalled them and tried to install 11.5 now those won't work either.

For both once I reboot after the attempted install I look at the driver manager and it says the version is installed but it shows a caution symbol and in the description says code 52, windows can't identify the driver signature.

I am running a laptop, the Asus G73J - A1 to be exact. So, I don't think this is a monitor problem. I always had problems installing new drivers on this machine, it usually took a very specific version of the installer, I usually used the one from the ATI home site, but the 11.6 won't install, and I can't find were ATI hosts the old versions, so I tried 11.5 installers from 3rd party sites, and none of them work. I tried using CCleaner and Driver Sweeper they don't seem to help either.

I can use the device manager auto detect update and it installs the 8.683.0.0 version from 17/12/2009... it only installs the drivers not Catalyst control center.

Anyone have any tips or ideas that I can try?

 

When I installed these I had just unplugged my 2nd monitor that was using HDMI. Glad to know that you guys have figured out the issue and hope to see a fix soon!

 

It's not the HDMI, I'm using DVI-> VGA + DP->VGA, no HDMI, and I BSOD on boot with these drivers.

 

Try cleaning your system properly after uninstalling the previous driver.
This is the method I've personally always used on both my desktop & laptop; you're better off using the latest Driver Sweeper (3.1.0) instead of the one being hosted in Guru3D.

And even if it's a laptop, there's no stopping Asus for using an HDMI connectivity for the display even if you can't see it.

Anyway, you can actually search this forum and find many links for previous drivers, usually on a thread started by asder.
Unless it's a leaked or RC drivers, it usually has links to download it from AMD servers.


@guy_uoft
Have you tried not using the DP?

 

Seems that a lot of New Bugs were introduce with this set of drivers , In my configuration Not using HDMI to HDMI solved the problem , but theres more people having BSOD even without using HDMI , lets see if we can pinpoint the problem , we are back to square #1 .

 

Well, DP is essentially an open standard equivalent to HDMI, much like OpenCL is to CUDA/DirectCompute, so maybe DP is the other culprit.

 

well I'm running eyefinity, so I'm not gonna be able to run without DP. I'll stick to 11.5b for now until AMD gets their **** together.

 

Just adding to this thread that I use HDMI too.
Didn't try with a DVI cable yet, not sure if I even have one floating around.

 

Well I got it working, and it seems to run fine, some more hours of gaming will be the final test.

What I did was I used the device manager and hit uninstall driver software and restarted. When I did this it seemed to uninstall the last attempt and rolled back to the one before. I did it again and it reverted to the windows VGA driver. I then uninstalled that one too, but windows just reloaded it on a restart.

So, I then ran driver sweeter 3.1 and restarted in safe mode and from there I installed the VGA driver recommended from the Asus support pages for this particular model of laptop "g73h".

I restarted again and rebooted in normal mode and I tired installing the 11.6 drivers and I got the same problem a BSOD. This time I looked at the Driver in the Device manager and it had the same caution symbol and message code 52 windows does not recognize the signature... and in another forum I read at this point to try and use the update utility from the device manger and select the install.exe manual so, I started to do that even though I did try this in the past.

Going through it you can select the option to browser for the file or have windows auto detect it, I choose to manually browse. At this point another brows option comes up and at this point just before you can actually browse for the file, there is another option below that says "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer" I selected that this time and it gave me three options "VGA, HD 5800, and HD 5870" I clicked HD 5870 (Which is my GPU model) and it prompted me to restart without letting me browse for a file.

I restarted and it said device drivers successfully installed, but it was the same version that windows auto installs but this time it said 5800 instead of VGA. I again tired to run the 11.6 installer and this time it worked. I am not entirely sure how this fixed it, but it seemed to be the setting in the windows device manager, I guess that it being originally default set to VGA causes it to have the code 52 error, and setting it to the correct GPU model seems to fix the issue.

This may be specific to this model of laptop, but it might be worth a try for those of you still having problems.

To clarify my laptop specs.

Asus G73jh - A1
GPU: Ati Mobility Radeon HD 5870
CPU: I7 - 720QM
OS: Win 7 Home premium 64 bit - SP1 installed all current updates installed
Memory: 8 gigs of DDR3 RAM (not sure of the rest of the details)

Anymore details I am not sure and if you need to know just look up the model of the laptop.

 

Wait...you didn't use the uninstaller from Catalyst Install Manager to uninstall the previous drivers?

 

Just disconnected my HDMI cable and attached a DVI cable instead, uninstalled 11.5 and then installed 11.6 + cap, no cleaners or anything used.
No BSOD, so it is as observed a problem with HDMI and DP.

 

I think you are asking me, I am not sure...

Originally I did use the uninstaller from Catalyst Install Manager, but it would go through the uninstalling motions and would say there was no ATI software installed and then it would just uninstall its self. It was not effective at uninstalling the drivers at all, hence i used the device manager or driver sweeper.

 

Also, it turns out it is not working 100%, DX based games run fine, but I can not run any OpenGL based games. I get this error, "LoadLibrary failed with error 998: Invalid access to memory location". I can't run any OpenGL apps or games at all, they all get the same error.

Looking through other forums this seems to be an on and off issue with recent drivers. This issue seems to have much involved with it, a recent windows patch causes some cases with this error do to a .net frame work security update with serer 2003. Some says its a problem with the added OpenGL 4.0 support Ati has added to the new drivers.

Still is much to look into for this.

 

I'm using hdmi too
I'll have to try (well, I have to find it first^^) with a dvi cable

 

I reverted back to 11.5 and it completely fixed the OpenGL problem.

So, clearly there is something messed up in 11.6, one forum it was mentioned that perhaps in the 11.6 installer for the 64 bit win 7 it installs the OpenGL driver for 32 instead which supposedly explains the error 998, since its to do with a conflict in how 32 bit and 64 bit set ups have different ways of accessing .dll files.

Honestly this is all over my head I am just repeating the message just in case there is something to it.

Either way reverting back to 11.5 and using my method mentioned before all my problem seem to be fixed.

Here is what I did in order.

1. Used the ati catalyst manger uninstall
2. Reboot
3. Use driver sweeper 3.1
4. Reboot
5. Used the driver uninstall in device manager
6. Reboot
7. Reinstalled the VGA driver - either by having windows search online for it or manually getting it from either ATI or the machines manufactures website (for me it was Asus)
8. Ran the .exe for 11.5 (input desired version here)
9. Reboot
10. In device manger check to make sure the correct driver model is picked instead of the VGA (for me its 5800) if not select and it will prompt to reboot, if it is already all good.

From my testing 11.6 for win 7 64 bit clearly has openGL issues.

Hope this helps some of you out there, I have been messing around on this for almost 8 hours.

 

Please read the posts above yours, and you see that there is a problem as soon as you use the HDMI OR DP outputs.
11.6 RC has a revised OPEN GL but has exactly the same problem regarding using those connections.
I'm running 11.6 RC right now with a DVI cable instead, as soon as I connect my HDMI cable I get instant BSOD.

 

the issue with DP HDMI is not 100% confirmed

see my post #52
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=346210&page=3


True, I use 2x DVI to HDMI, but I use a mDP to DP to HDMI too, and no issue on my side.

the difference that I can see, is that I am on vista 64 and not seven

Anyway, it is not normal for so many person to meet this issue!