Has my graphics card died? (AMD driver stopped responding)

[jto22]

A few times recently I had visual bugs on my PC where the screen flickered and random squares appeared over the screen. This was just at the desktop, so nothing intensive, but a restart seemed to fix. Every time this happened an error came up saying something like "AMD display driver stopped responding and successfully restarted" but the screen kept flickering all over regardless. Earlier the same happened whilst playing Dota, but this time my screen went black and it won't display anything.

Now everytime I boot, it shows the BIOS screen, says starting Windows and then the screen goes black every time the login screen should appear.

I assume it's the graphics card but I have no way to be sure. Firstly how do I diagnose it to ensure the problem is my GPU and not the PSU / motherboard or something else? I have tried a different monitor to no avail, so all I know for sure is it's not the monitor. Also Malwarebytes / MSE found nothing so I suspect it is a hardware issue.

I have an AMD Radeon 7850 1GB and I updated to the latest drivers a few days back when this first started happening.

Many thanks

EDIT: I can boot into safe mode, if that means anything

 

[pcdude234]

that sounds like the driver, you should try installing the old one

 

[coozie7]

Does the system have onboard graphics? If so, try that.
The only reliable way to check the card is to either pop it into your local 'mom and pop' small computer store and get them to test it or to try in in another system yourself.
The symptoms, though do strongly suggest the card has died.

 

[jto22]

that sounds like the driver, you should try installing the old one

Does the system have onboard graphics? If so, try that.
The only reliable way to check the card is to either pop it into your local 'mom and pop' small computer store and get them to test it or to try in in another system yourself.
The symptoms, though do strongly suggest the card has died.

I don't have onboard graphics so I'm trying to remove all AMD drivers so I can reinstall them. But when I run the AMD uninstaller it says "Detection driver error. Contact AMD for assistance". Any idea how to proceed? I could try removing from Device Manager but I also found this program in another thread on here. Can anyone vouch for that software?

Thanks!

EDIT: The AMD uninstaller is useless, when I select to uninstall "AMD Display Driver" an error appears saying "An unknown error has occured. Please exit and restart Install Manager", every time.

 

[coozie7]

DDU s a commonly used utility and Guru3D is a trusted site, but follow good download practice and scan the download before opening it.
It's best run in Safe Mode.
Once you're done there, you should be running under Windows basic VGA display (the Safe Mode drivers), so manually sweep through the system and delete any remaining AMD folders/files and finally run Ccleaners registry cleaner, Ccleaner is available for free here: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner. Once that is done download the latest WHQL drivers directly from the AMD website and install.

 

[jto22]

DDU s a commonly used utility and Guru3D is a trusted site, but follow good download practice and scan the download before opening it.
It's best run in Safe Mode.
Once you're done there, you should be running under Windows basic VGA display (the Safe Mode drivers), so manually sweep through the system and delete any remaining AMD folders/files and finally run Ccleaners registry cleaner, Ccleaner is available for free here: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner. Once that is done download the latest WHQL drivers directly from the AMD website and install.

Thanks, guess I will have to try it since the standard AMD uninstaller doesn't work. However I have a further issue, in that I cannot create a Restore Point as System Restore is turned off, and it cannot be turned on whilst in safe mode. The System Restore tab is missing from System Properties when I'm in Safe Mode, and thanks to my original problem I cannot boot in anything other than Safe Mode. I even tried editing the registry, as suggested here but still can't create a restore point. Would it be idiotic to run DDU without creating one? I'm not sure how I can create one to be honest.

 

[coozie7]

DDU will only kill the AMD video/audio drivers, you should be safe running it without first creating a restore point.

 

[jto22]

I was so close to reporting some good news. I thought it was definitely a driver issue, I ran DDU and rebooted, everything worked fine. I installed the new AMD drivers and rebooted at the end of the process, then upon reboot, after the Windows screen it just went instantly to a black screen again, same as before.

I'm at a loss what to do now. Removing the drivers with DDU worked, but the second I reinstall the AMD Display Driver it breaks again. Where does this leave me? The GPU runs fine until I install the AMD display driver.

 

[coozie7]

It leaves you with a faulty card.
Windows basic drivers don't use any of the GPUs' more advanced features, it's typical to see a card running perfectly well with them, only for it to fall over once the main drivers are installed and running if the card has a hardware fault-the Windows basic drivers don't use any of the advanced (faulty) hardware the main drivers will access.
You need to either: Get the card checked or try it in another system yourself (and that system must have the full AMD driver suite installed to test properly, see above).

 

[jto22]

I see, thanks a lot for all your replies, very much appreciated. At least we've established where the problem lies. I don't have another machine to test it in sadly, by "get the card checked", do you mean take the card down to a PC repair shop?

 

[coozie7]

Yep.