SOLVED: New RX 550 install resulting in Purple Screen. DOA?

[Kinger23]

Hi guys. New to the GPU upgrading world. I decided to upgrade my HTPC with the new PowerColor Radeon RX550 as the price is right and I wanted to get ready for my eventual purchase of a 4K TV, play Civ VI at HIGH, etc.

Current Specs are AMD A8 6600k, 430w 80+ PSU, Gigabyte GA-F2A88XN-WIFI mobo, 8 GB 1866 DDR3 ram. SSD, etc.

My install experience was as follows:

- Booted into new (550) GPU through HDMI no problem and started to update driver from AMD website. Was able to boot into windows with 550 HDMI port initially but about half waycthrough install, screen went Purple and I waited 10-15 minutes before rebooting.
- Screen continued to boot into Purple blank screen.
- Removed 550 and booted into Motherboard HDMI slot.
- Ran Driver Install again and it said previous install failed.
- Re-installed with Clean Install and after successful completion I powered off, reinstalled RX 550 and powered on. Windows Boot screen appears, Windows startup sound plays (so sound seems to be working) and desktop appears.
- While going to change resolution (to 1080p from 480p, approx 30 seconds) screen goes to Purple blank screen and eventually turns itself off.
- Power down, uninstall 550, reboot to motherboard HDMI, reinstall A8 Driver and everything seems to running like before.
- Uninstall A8 driver and power down.
- Reinstall 550 and boot. Windows start up screen shows, windows start up sound plays but 550 boots into Purple Screen.

Wondering what else to do or is my GPU Dead On Arrival??

Any help is appreciate. I spent the afternoon looking for threads on a similar nature but came up empty handed.

 

[dontlistentome]

My experience of Powercolor is they are a low end brand, their specialty is selling cards at the lowest possible price. So quality control may not be great.

One thing might be possible. In your bios, if you boot into it using integrated graphics, is there some kind of lock enabled, like secure boot? Sometimes a security feature like this is enabled, to prevent malware from messing around in the bios, but it also prevents you from making changes. If so, you could disable it, install the card, then when you're done you can re-enable it again.

 

[Kinger23]

Ugh, I wondered about PowerColor but I was pretty horny for the 550 and jumped the gun because it was the first one I found. Now I see there are MSI, Gigabyte, etc on Newegg for the same price or less, but I digress.

Went to investigate my bios and when i hit delete on post, I get a blank Blue Screen of Death. I noticed when I first booted with new GPU the Bios Splash Screen no longer came up and I'm thinking this is a direct result. I went into windows and reflashed current bios and still the same Blue Screen when trying to access bios setup.

So how badly has this thing screwed my system?

My experience of Powercolor is they are a low end brand, their specialty is selling cards at the lowest possible price. So quality control may not be great.

One thing might be possible. In your bios, if you boot into it using integrated graphics, is there some kind of lock enabled, like secure boot? Sometimes a security feature like this is enabled, to prevent malware from messing around in the bios, but it also prevents you from making changes. If so, you could disable it, install the card, then when you're done you can re-enable it again.

 

[photonboy]

The GPU shouldn't damage your system, however if it's defective (which seems certain) you will need to go back to the other graphics solution.

 

[Kinger23]

The GPU shouldn't damage your system, however if it's defective (which seems certain) you will need to go back to the other graphics solution.

I've gone back to the APU Graphics and re-installed the appropriate drivers and now my system freezes and reboots about 30 secs into Youtube videos, lol. Boy did this day not turn out as planned.

Thanks for answers guys. I'll continue to try and figure out what the hell is going on now. My system has worked flawlessly almost from Day 1, 4 years ago. Not sure what I've gone and done.

Update: After a few more un-installs and re-installs of Drivers I seem to have gotten back to stability!

 

[madmatt30]

1. Sounds faulty to me
2. Even if it isn't you shouldn't return it anyway.The RX 550 is an awful value card , the RX 460 is like $15-20 more & offers around 50% more performance.

 

[Kinger23]

1. Sounds faulty to me
2. Even if it isn't you shouldn't return it anyway.The RX 550 is an awful value card , the RX 460 is like $15-20 more & offers around 50% more performance.

Thank you for the response but I'm happy with what the RX 550 has to offer at it's price point.

 

[Kinger23]

So I think I've confirmed that it is not the hardware...
I received a reply from PowerColor and they gave me a trouble shooting list which is as follows:

1. Please try updating your Mother Board BIOS to the newest version.
2. Please check your ATX power supply, most of our graphic card needs a 500 watt or better power supply, with one 6-pin PCIe power connectors. Certified power supplies are strongly recommended; for a list of certified power supplies, please see the following link http://support.amd.com/en-us/recommended/power-supplies
3. Please try to plug in the graphic card into another PCIe slot if your MB has another PCIe x16 slot.
4. Please check if your system has good airflow. I would suggest you to have at least 2 fans in your PC, one in the front that will suck air in, the other one put in the back which will blow air out.
5. Please use driver fusion to remove all previous graphic card drivers. http://treexy.com/products/driver-fusion then installing AMD WHQL driver from: http://support.amd.com/en-us/download
6. Check all system drivers, update them to the newest WHQL version if website has new version.
7. Please do a Virus and Trojan scan to check if your system is infected or not.
8. Clean up your profile: Whenever you install a program, it will move your profile into the system and become more and more cumbersome. You can find many free cleanup programs online. CCleaner is the current general common Windows login key cleanup program. Download link: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download/standard
9. If possible, please do a fresh OS installing with only the necessary drivers. This is to rule out if it is a software issue.

The reason I say it seems not to be the hardware is because if I follow the steps to fully uninstall previous AMD Drivers before adding the 550, it works fine before attempting to update with new Driver. It's only during this process that screen goes purple.

They mention calling AMD directly, which I'm about to do.

Wish me luck!

 

[photonboy]

Hey,
1) If you haven't done so, use DDU to clean the drivers. Choose the "recommended" option, then reboot.
- do that now, AND if you switch to a new GPU which then has issues

2) Windows 10?
If so, try the "RESET PC" option, and choose to keep the DATA and APPLICATIONS.
a) type "reset" into search
b) click "reset this pc"
c) click "get started" and again make sure to choose to keep data and applications.

It MAY need to download data. Not sure. It should basically be resetting some settings and OVERWRITING files (which may be corrupt).

3) If you have another PC you can test the card there.

4) If you have a spare SSD or HDD (at least 60GB), you can try loading Windows 10 to it, with NO OTHER SSD or HDD installed. Test it, install the Radeon drivers.. if that's working then it sounds like a Windows software issue (hence my "RESET PC" recommendation).

*But... the fact that you had issues before you even booted into Windows again makes anything you do within Windows unlikely to help, but computers get weird issues so... good luck. I do think it's an issue with the RX-550.

OTHER:
You mention a 4K HDTV. Now, I doubt that the RX-550 can output a 4K, HDMI signal. Even if it could, you can't change game resolutions AFAIK when working with an HDTV.

So you'd likely setup the PC in the HDTV settings of the Radeon control panel as a 1080p input. That's frankly fine since you won't be gaming above 1080p anyway, and desktop should look fine at typical viewing distance.

 

[Kinger23]

*But... the fact that you had issues before you even booted into Windows again makes anything you do within Windows unlikely to help, but computers get weird issues so... good luck. I do think it's an issue with the RX-550.

OTHER:
You mention a 4K HDTV. Now, I doubt that the RX-550 can output a 4K, HDMI signal. Even if it could, you can't change game resolutions AFAIK when working with an HDTV.

No, it will boot into Windows with the 550 and the desktop shows up and all works fine until I install 550's drivers. Then about half way through install, screen goes purple and subsequently stays that way on reboots.

Also regarding 4K output, I grabbed this from AMD's site, I assumed it meant it could passthrough 4k to a HDTV (movies and such):

http://imgur.com/HZK61Yw

Giving your list of fixes a whirl.
Thanks!

Update: I used DDU and the issue persists. Now going to Reset PC but it only give me the option to keep my files and remove apps or remove everything. Are these just the Windows Apps from the Windows Store or all are all the programs removed??

 

[photonboy]

It does apparently support 4K @60FPS. I'm surprised.

Still not sure why the drivers cause it to fail though. I still suspect it's a hardware issue and that the drivers when installed stress it in some way, but other than RMA'ing to Powercolor I don't know what to suggest.

Not sure what "RESET THE PC" does exactly but there doesn't appear to be any harm in doing it.

 

[Kinger23]

After all the trouble shooting I was able to get into BIOS and turn of Integrated Graphics for the A8. Worked for a little bit but eventually problem came back. In a final act of trouble shooting I tried a different HDMI cord and hooked it up directly to my TV, skipping the Yamaha receiver. Eureka!
So I order a couple new Amazon Basics HDMI 2.0 cords and now amp, gpu and tv are playing nice!! Solved!!!