AMD PCI Express (3GIO) Filter requires Manually Removal after update to PCI Bus

I have a forum post on manually updating the AMD PCI Express (3GIO) Filter which can be found here.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=373501

The AMD PCI Express (3GIO) Filter is a driver that is left over from older Catalyst drivers.

I have recently discovered that the procedure that I have listed updates the AMD PCI Express (3GIO) Filter to the PCI Bus Driver but the procedure does not uninstall the actually driver.
In the worst case scenario, the AMD PCI Express (3GIO) Filter may still be running but not present in the Device Manager list.

The procedure to detect and remove the AMD PCI Express (3GIO) Filter driver is as follows:

Step 1)

First verify that the following files are present in your Windows Installation:

• AtiPcie.sys
• AtiPcie64.sys

The above two files are located in the following folder location:

Code:

C:\Windows\System32\drivers

If you do not find either of these two files, you do not need to proceed to the next step.

Step 2)

Now that you have identified that either or both of these files are present, we will proceed to remove the registry entry that references these files. We are going to first disable the driver.
A reboot is required and then you will be able to remove the files and the registry entry.

To disable the driver, open registry editor and navigate to :

Code:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\AtiPcie

Once you have found this location which is known as a " Key ", in the right hand pane, find in the Name column: " Start " with the Type column : " REG_DWORD " will be present with a value of " 0 ".
Double click on " Start " and dialog box will open. Change the value to " 4 ". This change will disable the driver from running on Windows start.

Click OK. Close Registry editor and reboot the computer.

Step 3)

Navigate to the files I have indicated above and delete the file(s).

To delete the registry key, open a Administrator command prompt and type the following:

Code:

sc delete AtiPcie

There will be a dialoge box that will confirm the key has been deleted.

A reboot is not required but recommended at this time.

You have now disabled and removed the AMD PCI Express (3GIO) Filter.

As always, make a system restore point before you perform any driver updating or removal.

I will monitoring this thread for responses.

 

Does reverting the PCI Bus driver from AMD's to Microsoft's affect this issue? I tend to do this when updating graphics drivers, and then reinstall AMD's afterwards.

 

No. You are dealing with the same device " PCI Bus ". You are just changing the driver on the same device.

The issue that I have described involves two different items one of which has replaced the other. The swap between the two devices does not uninstall the older driver. This is the reason for this thread.

 

So, new drivers (13.4) do not have 3GIO driver? They use standard PCI Bus with different paths? That is the reason for removal?

I'm asking this for 870 chipset, because removing 3GIO Filter driver have impact on performance, didn't tested with new drivers tho.

 

Correct. Any Catalyst driver above V12 no longer uses the 3GIO driver.

 

Thanks, very helpful info, and good find.

 

This did not work for me

After step 2, my computer doesn't restart and has to go back to a restore point.

 

Hello CheeseLMN : I'll need some more information.

What Catalyst driver version are you updating from?
Is the 3GIO filter present in the device manager?

 

So this isn't properly uninstalled?men I wish they would supply instruction like yours (manually )anyway for each stuff to uninstall .that way we could verify

 

Ty for the heads up!

 

There is a way. After trying everything, and a lot of digging. Finally found a program that will get rid of it.

Device Remover

Its like dev manager only more comprehensive.

Please be warned AtiPcie gets really deep into the registry. If you dont have an old PS2 keyboard, make sure that windows will boot straihgt into windows, no password, or you will get stuck. That is the problem with USB, no drivers dont work, PS2 dont care.

Once installed run program. Will take a minute while it digs. Go to Device list tab. Look for PCI BUS under device name. than scroll along and see if AtiPcie is the driver, if so tic the box on the left and a remove selected will highlight down right corner. Click remove selected. it will want to reboot.

This is the first time it ever rebooted without blue screening. Problem is it was tied into all my USB and PCI devices so windows had to reinstall all the USB and PCI drivers including network and sound.

Once that was finished it re ran device remover found a second instance as 3gio driver removed that as well and rebooted. That was it all gone.

Best of luck

 

After doing this, one of my display adapters went missing. I have 2 display adapters ATI 4250 and AMD Radeon 6650M - the 6650M has gone, I tried legacy drivers installation but nothing. Please help.

 

1) Perform a system restore. If you do not have one move to step two.
2) Create a restore point.
3) Open device manager. In the menu bar click on " view " and click on " Show hidden Devices " - Left click on " System devices " in the main window. Locate " PCI Bus " Right click on this entry and select " uninstall Device " and click the box that indicates " delete the driver software for this device ". If there is more then one entry, perform the same action on that entry.
4) Restart the computer and allow Windows to locate the older device driver. You may have to restart your computer one more time to have all devices running correctly.
5) Reply to this thread with the results.

You may have to reinstall the catalyst version for your older hardware to reinstall the two files that you have deleted above. Always create a Restore point before you play around with driver updates or removals!!

 

Yes I have created Restore Points, however, with the main topic of this thread, I want to keep Pci Bus, I do not want AMD PCI Express (3GIO) Filter. Is it possible to keep Pci Bus and have both my display adapters? Currently my Pci Bus version is 05th March 2019 and Version is 19.20.0.0 - also the CCC is 16.2.1. - Earlier with PCI Express I could not install any CCC - not even the 13.252 - I used to manually add the drivers. So my question is - Can I have Pci Bus and also both my display adapters ATI4250 and AMD Radeon 6650M? Thanks for your replies.

 

Ok I did as you asked. I created a Restore Point where in only 1 display adapter was showing as so far that was the best settings I had and my system was not crashing due to display drivers and sound drivers. I then proceeded to uninstall the PCI - little did I know that when I did this, a lot of about 30 devices lost their drivers and had to be reinstalled starting from the graphics drivers to network drivers to sound drivers to bluetooth drivers to usb driver including my mouse. Now I have new problems, the 6670M graphic card is showing with the 4250 display adapter, but seems only the 6670M which is a later dated device but with 1GB is working and the 4250 has over 2GB capacity but is not activated. Then on my network icon a red X mark is there even though I am connected to the net. Please advise further.

 

I'm afraid you went too far. You were only to remove the driver for the device named " PCI Bus " . Not every device that had the PCI listed in the device description.
I'm afraid that you may have caused irreparable damage to the Windows installation.

I would try the restore point before you deleted all the PCI device drivers and see what happens,
Your hardware may only work with the drivers that are supplied for your computer. I'm assuming that this is a laptop and this is why you have dual video cards?
I would use the drivers provided on the laptops driver home page.

 

I have restored it to the point where I am back to one display adapter - the 4200 series. I would like to point out that your procedure of the earlier wherein to remove PCI Express has actually made my laptop work better. I am only afraid that having one display adapter may take its toll long term. When I had the 6650M Adapter, my laptop used to crash and freeze. Now with only one adapter, it seems to work more than fine. Also earlier when I used to do a driver update search via Easy Driver app or DriverIdentifier app, it used to show me about 10 drivers to update, now its shows only 1 driver to update. Please advise what I should do.

I do not know how to insert images, or I would show you the PCI Bus - I only clicked that before restore point.

 

Please post laptop make and model and home page of laptop. What version of Windows was installed on the laptop when new?

You can upload an image to a number of different sites. Here are just a couple: https://pasteboard.co/ https://*********/
I don't believe new members can show an image in a thread until they have posted a certain number of posts however I believe you should be able to post a URL to the uploaded image?

You can also try to PM me with a URL of the uploaded image.

 

I take this opportunity to thank Watcher who has taken several days of his time to assist me with my laptop problems, wherein he has taught me several new strategies to fix my laptop even though it was not in his purview. I have now a laptop working 100% better than it was 3 days ago. Thanks Watcher.