Time for Me to Eat Some Well-Deserved Crow
Time for Me to Eat Some Well-Deserved Crow
It must be poetic justice--karma--me getting my "just desserts"--whatever you want to call it. After ~a decade (since 2002, really, before they were labeled "Catalysts") of Catalyst driver use, across different OSes, cpus, gpus, and of course Catalyst versions, I've had my first experience with what several people in the forums here have reported recently....it very much perplexes me to have to say:
I cannot uninstall the Catalyst 14.4 WHQL drivers. If I uninstall them, either using the Catalyst Manager's uninstall "Express Uninstall" option, OR the latest version of the AMD driver uninstall utility--my system becomes absolutely hosed and unusable. Fortunately, things were not
irredeemable, as I was able to successfully restore from a recent restore point (I learned long ago the value of creating regular restore points and why it's a very bad idea to turn System Restore off.)
Symptoms and description: Prior to installing the 14.4 RC1 Catalyst driver set, I used the latest version of the AMD driver uninstall utility, amdcleanuputility.exe , to clean out my previous drivers. I generally use the "Express Uninstall" option of the Catalyst Manager, but that time I used the uninstall utility out of pure curiosity. The uninstall of my previous driver set was uneventful--after the utility successfully concluded its in-depth uninstall, my system rebooted and I then installed the Catalyst 14.4RC1 drivers without incident.
A few days later I saw that the 14.4 WHQL drivers were released, and so I installed them right on top of the 14.4RC1's without incident. The install was normal and I proceeded to use the drivers without any problems, save for a fairly fairly big one that came out of nowhere:
After shutting down a browsing session in Firefox 29, I got one of those silly Windows Alfred-Hitchcock-profile
Blue Screens informing me, for the very first time, of an EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED error which was further identified as having been caused by an ATi Catalyst driver file--which it named precisely but which I did not write down. I decided to uninstall the 14.4 WHQLs and reinstall them, and that's when the troubles began. I went to programs & Features as usual and ran the Catalyst Install Manager and selected the "Express uninstall" option, as is also normal for me. After a "successful" uninstall I was asked to reboot but what I rebooted into was an inaccessible system stuck on my lock image screen (precedes my log-in page.)
All of my USB ports were inexplicably dead--no mouse, no keyboard, no way to get to my log-in prompt (lock image lifts with a LMB click to expose my log-in screen and a prompt into which I type my password.) That's when I figured I'd better try and get into safe mode to see what was happening.
I first had to edit the Windows 8 boot manager to provide me with F8 recovery and safe mode booting options as in Win7 and earlier. But before doing this I needed my keyboard back, so I popped in my Win8.1.1x64 boot DVD, booted to it (my UEFI bios retained full USB functionality so that I could change the boot drive--which also told me this was strictly a Windows software problem, whatever it was) and navigated through to a
successful System Restore (as System Repair was useless in this case and reported it could not fix the problem.) Got the keyboard back and, IIRC, I used the
bdcedit /set bootmenupolicy legacy command via an administrator-level command prompt to do that.
Now I had regained full control of my system, and I had put in place the F8 boot option for emergencies, but I was still running the 14.4WHQLs and I still needed to solve the problem (I'm bad like that--can't leave well-enough alone...) So I opened my UEFI again, looked around making sure that legacy keyboard support was turned on (it was) and looking at other minor settings and changing a few just to see if that might possibly make a difference if I encountered the problem again in my next attempt. It didn't.
Hopes that I had encountered some kind of software fluke were quickly dashed as I repeated this process with the same identical result
two more times...! In all, I made three attempts to use the Catalyst Manager's "Express Uninstall" option with the 14.4WHQL's installed. (The only difference in the last two attempts was that I now had a Win8 safe-mode boot option screen available, and from there I could do a System Restore without having to boot from a Windows DVD, as I had to do the first time.)
I decided to make one last attempt, this time using the amdcleanuputility.exe instead of the Catalyst Manager's "Express Uninstall" option. I had real hopes that this would work, since the same version of the amdcleanuputility.exe had worked flawlessly for me with an earlier pre-14.4 Catalyst driver, and without any ill effects--no disabled USB ports, etc.
No dice--I wound up with precisely the same result and again had to use System Restore to get back my healthy system--or rather a system that had seemed perfectly healthy prior to the 14.4 Catalyst installs.
Something in the 14.4WHQLs relating to their *uninstall* (in my case) is seriously bugged--for some reason the 14.4WHQL uninstall instructions are causing the deletion of some critical system files that render my system inaccessible in the reboot that takes place after the 14.4WHQL uninstall completes. I have to say that this is the first time for me to experience a problem pertaining to the *UNinstall* of a Catalyst. Presumably, the driver uses the same information to uninstall itself as the information it uses to install. So since it installed properly (apparently) with no ill effects anywhere detectable in my system, why will it not uninstall properly?
I also worry about that out-of-the-blue EXCEPTIONS_NOT_HANDLED error blue screen I got before I decided to uninstall and then reinstall--something caused that, and I'll bet that it actually is a bug in the 14.4WHQL Catalysts (because sometimes Windows misidentifies the source of an error.) At any rate, I am now *stuck* with the 14.4WHQLs which cannot be uninstalled from my system without shutting down my USB ports. I have no idea whether installing the next Catalyst driver set on top of these will correct the problem and allow me to uninstall *that* driver without hosing my system...I do know that I'll be creating a restore point beforehand, regardless.
Last, of course, apologies to those who may rightly feel that I unfairly belittled their complaints in earlier threads! There's definitely a problem here and it definitely has to do with the 14.4WHQL Catalysts and their install/uninstall routines.
Come on, AMD--you're better than this!
EDIT: Problem Solved...Got latest version of DDU and booted into safe mode and performed the recommended "clean uninstall" ...succeeded, despite a few warning notices and log comments. Rebooted successfully, all USB functional, and then installed the 13.12's ...which I had to install
twice in succession before they clicked into place properly...
All's well at the moment, I suppose--I shall be giving the 14.4's a
wide berth until AMD has some pertinent comment to make about why this might happen.
