AMD drivers have an advanced fame, however they normally do not brick your whole working system. Sadly for some customers, AMD’s newest Adrenalin 23.2.1 driver for Radeon RX 6000- and RX 7000-series GPUs seems to be doing simply that.

In response to a Twitter announcement from AMD (opens in new tab) in regards to the newly launched driver replace, a number of customers jumped into the replies to complain that the updates saved them from booting into Home windows.

Chrashed my entire laptop, now i’ve to setup home windows once more from scratch. ThanksFebruary 15, 2023

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You bricked my home windows installFebruary 15, 2023

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Whereas it is commonplace for a driver replace to trigger system points, it’s uncommon for a driver to really corrupt an working system. We have not confirmed the motive force challenge ourselves but, however the official Twitter account for body seize instrument CapFrameX tweeted out a doable trigger for the difficulty, indicating that the motive force could be making adjustments to the system BIOS.

[Update] The motive force appears to alter BIOS settings. Verify the boot choices when your system does not boot after putting in the motive force. Don’t simply reinstall the OS.February 15, 2023

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CapFrameX additionally factors to a discussion board put up on German tech website ComputerBase (opens in new tab) in regards to the challenge, which different customers on the positioning seem to substantiate as properly. TechRadar has reached out to AMD in regards to the studies and can replace this put up if and once we hear again from the corporate.

AMD’s Achilles’ heel strikes once more?

AMD arguably makes the most effective graphics card available on the market proper now for players (not less than for who cannot shell out shut to 2 grand for a GPU), nevertheless it is not clean crusing for Staff Crimson in its perennial battle with archrival Nvidia.

As quite a few customers complained in response to AMD’s tweet in regards to the new driver, the AMD Radeon RX 6000-series graphics playing cards have not gotten main updates for a number of months, and AMD’s driver launch infrequency has even been a promoting level for Nvidia (although it isn’t precisely probably the most compelling one, normally).

The motive force challenge comes at a time when AMD has been gaining quite a lot of floor on its rival within the shopper GPU market on the power of its RDNA three graphics playing cards, and the difficulty seemingly will not flip players off from shopping for AMD graphics playing cards. If extra customers encounter these varieties of great points, that might change shortly.