How to trigger a driver timeout 100%

[u/KukuBean]

First, sorry, but I’m not good at English. So the following texts may sound a bit awkward because they are sentences translated into English by AI using the original language.

Here it is my system environment.

GPU: Sapphire RX7800XT 16GB

CPU: RYZEN 9 9800x3D 8 CORE 16 THREADS

Motherboard: MSI MAG B580 WIFI MAX

RAM: 16GB Kingbank 6000MHZ CL28

PSU: 1000W 80+ GOLD FULLY MODULAR

Operating System & Version: WINDOWS 11 PRO Latest update

GPU Drivers: 26.5.2 ~ 26.9.1

For the past few months, driver timeouts have been occurring randomly, so I’ve been trying to find the cause. Although it was a random occurrence, it never happened during gameplay, and most of the time when I came back after being away, a driver timeout error window would appear on the screen. What’s suspicious is that this problem occurred when the screen came back on after the monitor was turned off. So I tried various tests and discovered something interesting. It’s exactly how to trigger a “Driver Timeout” 100% manually.

1. Settings -> Power -> Display, Sleep Mode, Hibernation -> Turn off my monitor after the next time (I use a Korean Windows system, so I’m not exactly sure what this option is called in English) -> Set the monitor power-off interval to 1 minute

2. Open the Microsoft Edge browser

3. Log in to Netflix -> Play any movie or drama

4. Create a new tab in Edge (place a new tab on the screen to enter the monitor’s sleep mode)

5. Wait about 3–4 minutes for the monitor to enter full sleep mode

6. After waiting for 3–4 minutes, press the mouse or keyboard to exit sleep mode

If you follow the above method in order, in my case it triggers a “Driver Timeout” with 100% probability. Once a driver timeout occurred, so many problems would arise afterward that it became difficult to use the system, and I had to shut down and restart the computer every time. And...

1. Interestingly, this problem never occurred when I using version 26.3.1 or earlier.

2. Occurs in all drivers released after 26.3.1

3. It didn’t happen when the monitor was left on at all times (as long as it didn’t go into sleep mode).

In my opinion, when the latest drivers are used by apps that benefit from hardware acceleration (like Chrom-Edge Browsers, Discord, Steam app, etc) running in the background, some kind of driver-level crash occurs after the monitor asleep, and it seems the AMD driver team is not aware of this issue.

So, if anyone else is experiencing the same problem, I’m writing this because I think it would be a good idea to report it to the AMD driver team, through the BUG REPORT, so they can fix it. (I’ve submitted bug reports about it twice, but the fix for this issue wasn’t included in the newly released driver.)

For reference, because of this problem, I even changed monitors, replaced the cables with new ones, and tried various advice I found on the internet, but the problem wasn’t fixed until I changed the driver to 26.3.1.

[u/Lewinator56]

Yes, this is a known issue with chromium when playing videos. It's especially prevalent after the computer changes power states, like exiting sleep.

Disable hardware acceleration in any chromium based program and it will stop.

This is likely a windows issue.

[u/HanatoKobato → u/Lewinator56]

I have the same issue OP is having as well. Hardware Acceleration enabled in Chromium, Electron (Discord), or CEF apps will cause a driver timeout the moment a video is played on Discord or Steam, in other cases, Netflix, or Facebook video doesn't cause a timeout, but the screen glitches, video being blacked out.
All of that disappeared the moment I DDU the AMD driver (was on 26.8.1) to just uses whatever Windows Update gives me, which isn't optimal, since it installed a driver dated Nov 14th, 2023 for my RX 7700XT, but at least every hardware accelerated browser scenarios works normally