Warning for OpenMW / AMD users

[Helios]

"OpenMW causes AMD Adrenalin driver to freeze and crash."
https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenMW/comments/1au88ja/openmw_causes_amd_adrenalin_driver_to_freeze_and/
(Rewrote this whole post so people would stop sperging out)

My specs:
OS: Windows 10 x64
video card: AMD RX 6700
driver version: Adrenaline 24.3.1

I'd been playing with OpenMW previously for maybe 10+ hours with no problems.
At some point while playing my screen turned black and wouldn't turn back on. After rebooting, I got an error message when trying to launch the Radeon Dashboard. Rebooting didn't fix this, I had to reinstall my drivers. I kept playing OpenMW and again, after a while I got a black screen. After rebooting I found out my user profile had been turned into a "temporary profile" meaning that all my appdata folders and app settings couldn't be accessed. Rebooting multiple times did not fix the issue. I had to go into the registry and edit/delete some entries to be able to log in properly into my profile. Since then I have experienced some instances of visual glitches only in games running OpenGL like OpenMW does, but never any crashes.
I don't know how rare this problem is, what causes it, I don't care. I am not asking for advice, a lecture in how drivers work, life advice, counseling or a hug.
I am making this post so people with the same hardware software combo know that, yes this can happen and decide if they want to go ahead anyway.

On a side note, I switched to PRO drivers instead of Adrenaline and the issue with the visual glitches seems to have gotten less frequent at least.

That's all, no need to thank me, just trying to help out.

[Ghost]

I myself, my brother, and 3 out of the 5 other people on my server are using AMD and haven't had this issue.

Only 1 of us has been having an issue (which we've been able to mitigate), and that's because it seems determined to use their integrated cpu graphics rather than the dedicated gpu.

YMMV, but typically what you're describing there isn't something that's possible by this or even most regular software that isn't designed to mess with those things. I'd be looking at the Adrenalin software itself, rather than OpenMW in this case.

Might want to look at turning Adrenalin off when you're not specifically using it.

[Helios]

Originally posted by Ghost:

I myself, my brother, and 3 out of the 5 other people on my server are using AMD and haven't had this issue.

Only 1 of us has been having an issue (which we've been able to mitigate), and that's because it seems determined to use their integrated cpu graphics rather than the dedicated gpu.

YMMV, but typically what you're describing there isn't something that's possible by this or even most regular software that isn't designed to mess with those things. I'd be looking at the Adrenalin software itself, rather than OpenMW in this case.

Might want to look at turning Adrenalin off when you're not specifically using it.

And how do I turn off my driver? "what you're describing isn't something that's possible"
I am just describing what happened to me. Twice. I don't know what exactly causes this and what possible workarounds there are to prevent it from happening again until the underlying issue has been fixed by an update to either OpenMW or AMD drivers, but I won't risk running such software on my PC again. I don't like bricked drivers and having to recover my user profile.

It's up to anybody else if they want to take the chance, I am just giving you the information, you do what you want.

[Ghost]

Originally posted by 🅷🅴🅻🅸🅾🆂:

And how do I turn off my driver?

Sorry, that was poorly worded.

I'm not saying turn off your driver, but rather all the extra stuff they package with it that runs in the background - the overlay, it's hotkeys etc. You can disable those in the AMD software. Should be able to find it easily enough using your computer's search bar if you don't want to go looking through folders.

Originally posted by 🅷🅴🅻🅸🅾🆂:

"what you're describing isn't something that's possible"

^ By most software. As in, something else is causing the problem, not specifically OpenMW.

AMD has a rep for bad drivers for a reason, and quick search turns up that the AMD 24.x.x drivers are running into problems a lot more than usual.

Would suggest rolling back to a previous driver version, but you do you.

Don't really have the time to go into the how of doing that right now, but for any interested there should be plenty of video guides available and should be able to find more in-depth help on AMD's forums: https://community.amd.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/message?q=rollback&noSynonym=false&collapse_discussion=true

[Helios]

Originally posted by Ghost:

Originally posted by 🅷🅴🅻🅸🅾🆂:

And how do I turn off my driver?

Sorry, that was poorly worded.

I'm not saying turn off your driver, but rather all the extra stuff they package with it that runs in the background - the overlay, it's hotkeys etc. You can disable those in the AMD software. Should be able to find it easily enough using your computer's search bar if you don't want to go looking through folders.

Originally posted by 🅷🅴🅻🅸🅾🆂:

"what you're describing isn't something that's possible"

^ By most software. As in, something else is causing the problem, not specifically OpenMW.

AMD has a rep for bad drivers for a reason, and quick search turns up that the AMD 24.x.x drivers are running into problems a lot more than usual.

I already had all that stuff turned off, because I don't like it. I only recently switchted to an AMD card for the first time, so I don't have personal experience with their drivers, but all I can say is that this kind of error has never happened to me before on any card with any driver. In fact, if it hadn't happened I would've thought it shouldn't be possible either. Since every other game I've been playing on this particular driver version so far has worked fine, I think I'll just wait and see if an update comes along that fixes things.

[mbrowne999]

Have you tried real Morrowind on your AMD? Along with Morrowind Code Patch and Graphics Extender I think you'll be impressed.

[SigmaSquadron]

Originally posted by 🅷🅴🅻🅸🅾🆂:

Not only did OpenMW crash, it corrupted my driver (twice, first time I thought it was a fluke), it also corrupted my Windows user profile somehow .
Luckily for me some regisitry edits could restore my user profile, still this has to be the worst case of a game crash I have ever seen.

That's... not what corruption is. You're describing a state issue. Corruption is what happens when the kernel or userland software (or hardware itself) writes the incorrect binary data to a given sector of your disk. Since you've fixed the issue by altering the state of the Windows Registry, your user Registry configuration wasn't corrupted, just stuck in a state that Windows didn't expect. Personal computing, especially in macOS and Linux, is slowly moving towards a future where such issues would no longer occur, as root filesystems become immutable (macOS, SUSE MicroOS, Fedora Silverblue) or ephemeral (Alpine, NixOS).

As others have mentioned, OpenMW isn't at fault here. AMD has a truly horrible history of delivering functional drivers on Windows, though I'd say Windows' own graphical stack is to blame here, as AMD's open-source drivers on Linux are excellent in comparison. But I digress; simply install the default AMD drivers through Windows update, and avoid Adrenalin.

[Helios]

Originally posted by SigmaSquadron:

As others have mentioned, OpenMW isn't at fault here. AMD has a truly horrible history of delivering functional drivers on Windows, though I'd say Windows' own graphical stack is to blame here, as AMD's open-source drivers on Linux are excellent in comparison. But I digress; simply install the default AMD drivers through Windows update, and avoid Adrenalin.

You are telling me some generic Microsoft driver is going to perform better than the driver supplied for the specific hardware by the manufacturer?

[SigmaSquadron]

Originally posted by 🅷🅴🅻🅸🅾🆂:

Originally posted by SigmaSquadron:

As others have mentioned, OpenMW isn't at fault here. AMD has a truly horrible history of delivering functional drivers on Windows, though I'd say Windows' own graphical stack is to blame here, as AMD's open-source drivers on Linux are excellent in comparison. But I digress; simply install the default AMD drivers through Windows update, and avoid Adrenalin.

You are telling me some generic Microsoft driver is going to perform better than the driver supplied for the specific hardware by the manufacturer?

No? Where exactly did you get the impression I told you that?
Most vendors supply standard drivers through Windows Update, and Windows installs them automatically if the required hardware is detected. Generally, it is best to let Windows Update install all of the required drivers, than install separate binary packages from the manufacturer's website.

[Helios]

Originally posted by SigmaSquadron:

No? Where exactly did you get the impression I told you that?
Most vendors supply standard drivers through Windows Update, and Windows installs them automatically if the required hardware is detected. Generally, it is best to let Windows Update install all of the required drivers, than install separate binary packages from the manufacturer's website.

Except for AMD's drivers is what you're saying?

[SigmaSquadron]

Originally posted by 🅷🅴🅻🅸🅾🆂:

Originally posted by SigmaSquadron:

No? Where exactly did you get the impression I told you that?
Most vendors supply standard drivers through Windows Update, and Windows installs them automatically if the required hardware is detected. Generally, it is best to let Windows Update install all of the required drivers, than install separate binary packages from the manufacturer's website.

Except for AMD's drivers is what you're saying?

Let's start from the beginning.
Back in 1990, hardware vendors bundled the drivers needed to make their hardware work in floppy disks and CDs.
In 2001, Microsoft had the idea to ask manufacturers to bundle the drivers in Windows Update, but while some did, not all vendors used Windows Update for distributing their drivers.
Now, between 2006 and 2015, Windows was in sort of a limbo state when it came to drivers. Some drivers came in CDs, some came from the manufacturer's website, and a small minority came bundled through Windows Update.
But then, Windows 10 solved this problem by requiring many manufacturers to bundle their drivers with Windows Update, if they wished to get their hardware signed with Microsoft's key for Secure Boot support (which is a requirement for Windows 11 and above, but was available since Windows 10.)

This all means that today, there are no more CDs for modern drivers, and hardware manufacturers bundle everything you need with Windows Update; you don't need anything from their websites, unless you're doing something non-standard, like using a new driver GUI (Adrenalin) or using AI (ROCm). Simply make sure driver installs are enabled in your update settings, and Windows Update will configure everything.

[naii.neocities.org]

funnily enough my drivers haven't been crashing. It's just OpenMW itself. Actually convinced me to use MGEXE for the first time

On a 6600 btw.

[SigmaSquadron]

Originally posted by naii_:

funnily enough my drivers haven't been crashing. It's just OpenMW itself. Actually convinced me to use MGEXE for the first time

On a 6600 btw.

Don't forget to collect the stack trace of your crashes and report them on OpenMW's issue tracker.

[lonetrav]

Originally posted by 🅷🅴🅻🅸🅾🆂:

... it corrupted my driver (twice, first time I thought it was a fluke), it also corrupted my Windows user profile somehow ...

How would this be possible technically? It would assume that OpenMW is "somehow" directly manipulating / changing the drivers. ???

[SigmaSquadron]

Originally posted by lonetrav:

Originally posted by 🅷🅴🅻🅸🅾🆂:

... it corrupted my driver (twice, first time I thought it was a fluke), it also corrupted my Windows user profile somehow ...

How would this be possible technically? It would assume that OpenMW is "somehow" directly manipulating / changing the drivers. ???

It isn't. OP clearly does not understand how modern graphics stacks work.

[Helios]

Originally posted by SigmaSquadron:

Originally posted by lonetrav:

How would this be possible technically? It would assume that OpenMW is "somehow" directly manipulating / changing the drivers. ???

It isn't. OP clearly does not understand how modern graphics stacks work.

No, I don't understand the technical minutia of how drivers work. I understand, however, cause and effect.
Cause: I run OpenMW on my PC. Effect: I had to reinstall my drivers. Twice.
Are you telling me what happened can't happened because you don't know how and I can't explain it to you due to a lack of technical acumen?