AMD drivers and "Display Driver Error"

[echo14612]

I have an AMD Radeon 7700 family video card. After installing v16.4 drivers, my "protected" Windows Media Center recordings were no longer playable. I got "display driver error". I started over, trying to obtain duplicates of the recordings I lost. Today I updated to v16.5.21. Now all those new recordings (and old ones) are giving me this error. Why is this happening? Is there any way I can restore access to my previous recordings? How can I prevent this happening again (short of never upgrading my drivers )?

[mcewinter]

Roll back your driver. If it's a dedicated media pc then never upgrade your diver.

Otherwise, remove the driver and associated catalyst software and reinstall. If you install the full driver suite including the catalyst control center, then proceed to upgrade the driver via windows updates (which does not provide the CCC) then you can expect to have issues. Without knowing how you performed your upgrade, I'm merely point out that video drivers can get a little tricky if you're not careful. Also, the error you're experiencing can also be a sound driver issue.

[echo14612]

Roll back your driver. If it's a dedicated media PC then never upgrade your diver.

Otherwise, remove the driver and associated catalyst software and reinstall. If you install the full driver suite including the catalyst control center, then proceed to upgrade the driver via windows updates (which does not provide the CCC) then you can expect to have issues. Without knowing how you performed your upgrade, I'm merely point out that video drivers can get a little tricky if you're not careful. Also, the error you're experiencing can also be a sound driver issue.

Thank you for your response. I uninstalled the AMD drivers and installed some from 2014 without CCC. This did not re-enable me to see ALL the videos I lost when I did a driver update in March, but it DID enable the viewing of the files I recorded between March and today. I sure hate this DRM crap.

[Scallica]

The lesson learned is, always take a system snapshot before messing with your HTPC.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/4241/how ... windows-7/

[mcewinter]

Roll back your driver. If it's a dedicated media PC then never upgrade your diver.

Otherwise, remove the driver and associated catalyst software and reinstall. If you install the full driver suite including the catalyst control center, then proceed to upgrade the driver via windows updates (which does not provide the CCC) then you can expect to have issues. Without knowing how you performed your upgrade, I'm merely point out that video drivers can get a little tricky if you're not careful. Also, the error you're experiencing can also be a sound driver issue.

Thank you for your response. I uninstalled the AMD drivers and installed some from 2014 without CCC. This did not re-enable me to see ALL the videos I lost when I did a driver update in March, but it DID enable the viewing of the files I recorded between March and today. I sure hate this DRM crap.

You can rollback drivers rather than reinstalling drivers. I'm not sure if that will offer you any better of luck but it might be worth looking into. I'm unsure how far you can roll back.

[mcewinter]

Also, you might want the Catalyst Control Center installed so you can toggle certain things like dynamic contrast. Otherwise you will have to control everything via the registry. As long as you uninstall all ATI software before upgrading, you shouldn't have issues. If one isn't careful, it's possible that windows update can upgrade your driver casing a conflict with the current catalyst software.

My advice is install the full suite of software (after uninstalling ALL ATI software (if present)) and never upgrade via Windows updates, if at all.

On a side note, I keep current with Windows updates (never automatic) but I leave drivers as is unless there is a pressing need to upgrade or downgrade. YMMV.

[DavidinCT]

The lesson learned is, always take a system snapshot before messing with your HTPC.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/4241/how ... windows-7/

Heck ya ! I use Acronis, It takes 10 min to image a 60gb SSD (WMC ONLY machine), to one of the other media drives and it takes less than 5 min to restore if it has a problem.

and FIND that magic driver that works and DONT upgrade it unless you NEED to or your having a problem. I have a NVidia card, My driver is about 10-20 versions back. If I rebuild my machine today, I will use the older driver BECAUSE IT works, no need to upgrade.

On My dedicated HTPC, I just got up to the start of the year, and disable Windows Updates... Newer fixes for Windows 7 can break WMC and once it's stable, DONT mess with it.

If it Aint broke, don't fix it..

[joecrow]

For your info:-

I just noted today that AMD have released a newer version of the driver pacckage for the OPs card, now 16.5(Hotfix) and they appear to no longer offer/recommend 16.4 just 16.3. no indication from the release notes that 16.4 might have caused the OPs problem or what the actual "Hotfix" was but maybe
On a general note I have found over the years that the AMD driver updates work very well, just a quickly fixed minor problem now and again! I am not a dinosaur (don't fix it if it ain't broke type) very much the oposite but given that both Win 7 and WMC are now dying and dead I would have to concede that it might be a good idea for the OP and others in the same situation to close down the shutters on updates or take up the free Win 10 offer (before it is too late) and seek compatible HTPC program.