Every time I upgrade drivers (AMD), my monitor is out of range?

Spiros94

Member
Hey, so as I mention in the title of the post the monitor goes out of range every time I upgrade the drivers. I've gotten kinda used to it now, every time this happens I open AMD Radeon settings and use the Windows key + left arrow to move the window to the left (secondary) monitor and from there I create a new resolution for the main monitor (1920x1080) and set that one. For some reason, after every upgrade the resolution for the main monitor is set to 1600x1200 and it goes out of range and the 1920x1080 resolution isn't an available choice in the "Display Settings" setting. So I do have a fix for every time it happens but I'd rather not have to do it. Also, it depends on having a second monitor and that is depending on something I'd rather not depend on.

I also have another question, my second monitor has started this week going black for just a sec here and there every few minutes. Sometimes it happens with just 5 minute intervals, sometimes with 30 minute ones. Any idea why that happens?
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Is this with a dedicated video card or onboard? If dedicated, how old is the card? How are the temps?
 

Spiros94

Member
Thanks for replying. It is indeed a dedicated video card, it's an ATI AMD Radeon R9 380 Series 4GB, I bought it brand new around 4 years ago I think. I think it works just fine, the temp has always been a bit high but from what I gather that's just AMD in general. If I remember correctly, I had read that this video card works well at 70-80C, so I never really worried when I saw high temps. Right now, I have the two monitors on, a few programs, but no video games and the temp is stable at 72C. Room temp is at around 29C and the fans work at 739 / 3000 rpm, as seen in AMD Radeon Settings. I set the fans to 1500 / 3000 rpm and they dropped the temp to 45C in just a minute, so that makes me think that the video card's software doesn't think that 72C is a high enough temp to get the fans working, it's cruising at that temp. I'm no expert of course and I could definitely be wrong but I like computer stuff so hey I might have gotten this right :p
 

Spiros94

Member
Some sort of corruption?? What exactly does that mean? Will the corruption you mentioned be treated if I perform a clean install? I don't feel great about a clean installation and here's why, after my last format, Windows 10 installed some drivers for the video card that weren't the latest. When I did a clean install I kept getting an error, that some file was missing. That file, was being installed by the drivers, I even caught its name above the installation bar as file after file was installed. So after many failed attempts I let Windows 10 install the drivers it wanted to and then just upgraded. It's been less than a year since that and every time new drivers were available I just upgraded. So do you think there's something I can do besides that?
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
I didn't say to do a fresh install of windows, the ddu program will remove all video drivers and software and then you can download and install the latest driver software. Windows will still be intact.
 

Spiros94

Member
Oh no, I understood what you meant, I mentioned the format because that was the last time I tried to perform a clean install of the video card drivers. Everything I said is about an installation of the video card drivers, not of Windows. So, with that in mind, the difficulty that I was met with trying to perform a clean installation of the video card drivers, what do you say? Is there something I can do other than that since that's a bit of a pain?
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
But if the driver is corrupted somehow then DDU is the only thing that will fix it besides a fresh install of windows.
 

Spiros94

Member
Alright, I'll try a clean installation using DDU. I'll get back to you.

Edit: At the link you've posted, it mentions that it should be used in safe mode for best results, are there any things I should be careful with? Or do I just go in safe mode, run DDU, hit a big, clear "Clean" button, restart and then install the new drivers? I noticed it said that I should disconnect the internet to avoid having Windows Update installing drivers on its own, so I've already downloaded the drivers to be installed.
 
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Spiros94

Member
Ok so I ran DDU in safe mode, cleaned and restarted (normal mode) and then, disconnected from the internet, I installed the drivers I had downloaded and got the same result. The drivers are the latest available (18.7.1) and I don't know if this helps but I remembered when it all started. At some point, a couple years ago I think, I was looking around in AMD Radeon Settings and was clicking on stuff to see what they did. That's when I clicked on GPU Scaling, toggling it on and got the out of range message. I had gotten that before in video games when I set them to an unsupported resolution, but they always reverted back after 10-30 seconds, showing something like "Do you want to keep your changes? If not click no, or wait and they will revert automatically". So I was waiting for that to happen for a minute or so, only to find out that it wouldn't. Seems like that automatically reverting the change wasn't a feature of the AMD Radeon Settings so I was left with the Out Of Range message. I had gone to safe mode to uninstall the drivers I think and install new ones to no avail. Eventually, I used my TV as a second monitor to open AMD Radeon Settings, move it to the second monitor so I can actually see it and from there deactivated GPU scaling for the main monitor. I think I've gotten the Out Of Range message every time I've upgraded the drivers since then. Again, I don't know it this helps, but it might point to a likely source of the problem.
 

Spiros94

Member
I don't know how great of an idea that is :p I'd like to be able to play most games without silly crashes here and there and I have noticed that updating the drivers actually helps with that!
 
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