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AMD 7970 gpu broken? - fan speed reduced > crashed > now win 8 hangs

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sunnyd76

New Member
Joined
Aug 31, 2014
Hi All,

I've got a gigabyte 7970 ghz edition card that I fear i've been an idiot and turned into a brick.

Basically, I've been running msi afterburner for some time and have the overclocking settings set up nice, then last week decided that I wanted to make the card quieter for non gaming use... so I monitored the GPU temp and reduced the fan speed down. I can't remember what fan speed setting I settled for but the temp remained the same and the noise was significantly lower (but still audible).

Anyhoo, things worked great until I decided to load up a game and forgot to switch profiles to auto fan speed.... doh... I then left the game running for around an hour whilst away from the computer. When I got back my windows 8 system had rebooted and was now running on the Intel mobo gpu... btw i've got a p8z77 pro (http://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/P8Z77V_PRO/). I checked device manager and there was no 7970 listed. After a full power off and power on I managed to get some output from the 7970 but it would sometimes make it into windows and then hang after 3-5 minutes and other times hang on boot after the windows 8 logo goes to black screen. I tried system restore, removing my 7970 drivers, removing afterburner.... still no luck. The times is does make it into windows, there are no artifacts on screen that would suggest memory or gpu issues (I would expect this?) but the screen literally just freezes and but can still move the mouse around. No keyboard response and can't ctrl-alt-del. I've done numerous reboots and short of rebuilding my system I *think* i've done what I can....

Currently my 7970 is boxed and i'm booting successfully off my Intel HD 4000

Any gurus on this topic to put my mind to rest one way or the other?? I've heard about reflowing for nvidia cards to fix some issues, but not sure of that's applicable here? Or should I try a rebuild?

Cheers for any advice, i'm really pissed at myself atm lol
S
 
If you can still move the mouse, then it sounds more like a Windows issue.

Card instability=I would typically expect everything to freeze, even the mouse pointer, similar to an unstable CPU.

Not a case of classic bad hardware.
 
RJARRRPCGP, well that's given me some hope! Yeh it doesn't seem like a hardware lock given that the mouse works. Maybe it's worth installing windows again on another partition or moving the card to a different slot....

I'll give that a whirl and report back.

Thanks!
 
see if you can boot to safe mode.

it will disable afterburner and amd controlpannel from starting.

if it works you know its a driver or afterburner caused issue.
 
see if you can boot to safe mode.

it will disable afterburner and amd controlpannel from starting.

if it works you know its a driver or afterburner caused issue.

Ahh... yes safe mode works fine.. interesting. I've uninstalled afterburner already and used the default amd uninstaller to uninstall catalyst beta. Is there a recommended driver cleaning tool to use?

Thanks!
 
Remove the drivers in safe mode

1. Go to Add/Remove Programs

2. Uninstall the Catalyst Install manager (Express Uninstall)

3. Reboot the computer and log back into windows as normal

4. Go to folder options and select “show hidden files and folders”

The next part of the guide will remove all ATi/AMD files and folders from the computer.

5. Go to your C drive and remove the “AMD” folder

6. Double click the “Program Data” folder (Normally hidden) and remove all ATi/AMD folders

7. Go back to C and double click “Program Files” and remove all ATi/AMD folders

8. Go back to C and double click “Program Files (x86)” and remove all ATi/AMD folders

9. Go back to C and double click “Users”

10. Access the name of your windows profile and double click “AppData” (Normally hidden)

11. Check the “Local”, “LocalLow” and “Roaming” folders for any ATi/AMD folders and remove them.

12. Go back to “Users” and check the “Default” folder (Normally hidden)

13. Double click “AppData” (Normally hidden)

14. Check the “Local” and “Roaming” folders for any ATi/AMD folders and remove them.

The next part of the guide will remove registry entries left by the AMD drivers.
15. Close everything down and go back to your desktop

16. Click start, then type “regedit”.

17. Click “HKEY_CURRENT_USER” and extend the folder

18. Click “Software” and extend the folder

19. Remove all AMD and ATi Folders

20. Click “Wow6432Node” and extend the folder (Within the software folder)

21. Remove the “AMD” folder

22. Click “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE” and extend the folder

23. Click “SOFTWARE” and extend the folder

24. Remove all AMD and ATi Folders

25. Click “Wow6432Node” and extend the folder

26. Remove all AMD and ATi Folders

27. Click “HKEY_USERS” and extend the folder

28. Click “.DEFAULT” and extend the folder

29. Click “Software” and extend the folder

30. Remove all AMD and ATi folders

31. Click “S-1-5-18” and extend the folder

32. Click “Software” and extend the folder

33. Remove all AMD and ATi folders

34. Click “S-1-5-21-1632250243-966907716-928185508-1000” and extend the folder

35. Click “Software” and extend the folder

36. Remove all AMD and ATi Folders

37. Close down regedit and empty your recycle bin

38. Undo the folder options change to hide the hidden folders

39. Reboot

40. Install your AMD/Nvidia drivers and reboot

(Remember, if you look in some of the folders mentioned in this guide but don’t have any AMD/ATi folders, just move to the next appropriate step. This means the uninstall option has removed such files for you. But as we know, the uninstaller still leaves a lot of things behind) Do at your own risk.
 
LOL, 40 steps? Driver cleaner pro in safe mode people... Don't make it harder than it needs to be. :)
 
Last edited:
For future reference to anyone who may not know better, take caution when editing your registry. Not something I'd recommend to most average PC users (not saying the OP is an average user, just that average users may read this post).

Remove the drivers in safe mode
 
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