PSA: Make sure you have the right drivers

[Omnislap]

I started Ys IX about a week ago, and it worked fine. All was going well until two days ago when it hung on startup. It would show the NISA logo followed by the Falcom logo in the sky with the two moons, and then black screen, not responding. My first step was to verify the game files, and try again, which worked, so all was good.

Yesterday there were no issues, but today, same thing. So I verified files, and restarted, but it didn't work. I then tried a whole ton of different things, including disabling overlays, restarting, verifying again (never tried reinstalling, but that was next on my list), and nothing worked. So I checked my graphics drivers, downloaded the new drivers, installed, and... after fighting with Windows blocking the new drivers because it prefers the outdated ones it had automatically installed (yay Windows!), and ultimately doing a factory reset install to force the install, I got the new drivers, and everything seems to be working.

Specs for reference (no, I didn't buy from scalpers, and yes, I know that I really lucked out):
Ryzen 7 5800X
Radeon RX 6800 XT
32 GB RAM

[Aura Enterpr//se]

Wait, why does Windows even block the GPU driver update in the first place? First time I heard about this except laptop.

[Lywelyn]

at any rate glad you made it, but keep in mind an outdated working driver is always a + choice compared to an unstable latest one, if it works, just let it work, and leave adventurers do the beta testing of new firmware

[jesse.viviano]

Originally posted by NiGHTS:

at any rate glad you made it, but keep in mind an outdated working driver is always a + choice compared to an unstable latest one, if it works, just let it work, and leave adventurers do the beta testing of new firmware :emilieDare:

That is not always the best choice. Video drivers sometimes have security vulnerabilities that get fixed from time to time. The old driver then becomes unsafe to use once the vulnerability becomes public. Nvidia regularly fixes security vulnerabilities in its drivers as seen in https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/security/ and recently fixed a bumper crop of security vulnerabilities with its July driver releases as seen in https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5211 . In this case, the more unsafe choice is to leave the old driver in place.

[avenueplus]

Originally posted by Jade d'Nos:

Wait, why does Windows even block the GPU driver update in the first place? First time I heard about this except laptop.

I have a few topics related to this.

・Is os a clean install on its own?
If it is pre-installed, whoever did it may have made some configuration changes.
Many of the os settings are stored in the registry, which is sometimes tricky.

・Do you have any security software installed?
Security software runs with high privileges and sometimes protects os excessively.
In the case of pre-installed software, third party stuff may be pre-installed and a bit overloaded.

[Lywelyn]

welp i mean if someone's strong enough to get throught your anti virus and VPN alike, ok then, it's not your average IT who can get throught some firewalls, let alone an outdated firmware, worste case, you just make sure you have a back up and that's it,

[Omnislap]

Originally posted by Jade d'Nos:

Wait, why does Windows even block the GPU driver update in the first place? First time I heard about this except laptop.

No idea. I suspect Windows somehow thought I had a more recent driver than the one I was trying to update to. It was definitely some weird minimum install though because the Radeon software was missing a whole ton of features before the update.

Originally posted by avenueplus:

I have a few topics related to this.

・Is os a clean install on its own?
If it is pre-installed, whoever did it may have made some configuration changes.
Many of the os settings are stored in the registry, which is sometimes tricky.

・Do you have any security software installed?
Security software runs with high privileges and sometimes protects os excessively.
In the case of pre-installed software, third party stuff may be pre-installed and a bit overloaded.

OS is a clean install, I built the PC myself. I was busy with other games when I built it though, so I guess I forgot to get the proper GPU drivers. As for anti-virus, I have Bitdefender, but that wasn't the culprit because the Radeon installer said it failed because it was rolled back by Windows (https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/gpu-kb205). Either way, selecting a factory reset install did the trick because that removes previous drivers before installing the new one.

[avenueplus]

Originally posted by Omnislap:

It was definitely some weird minimum install though because the Radeon software was missing a whole ton of features before the update.

I think that's suspicious.
It's either a minimum archive of only the drivers, or there's some problem with the install option and only the drivers were installed.
The amd installer has always been plagued with some kind of warning or quit weirdly in the middle of the installation, but that trend hasn't been fixed.

I guess that's why it was in a strange installation state.

[avenueplus]

In addition to that, if you leave the graphics board running after assembling it, windows 10 may install a conservative driver on its own.

[Kiru]

AMD drivers love to create unnecessarily problems. But with the whole "sometimes works, sometimes doesn't", sounds like anti virus shenanigans.