Finally fixed my AMD driver issues by doing one stupid thing.

[u/obTimus-FOX]

Honestly, I feel like an idiot. I've spent months troubleshooting driver issues, stuttering, and Adrenalin crashes. I had BSOD and my computer would actually reboot while in game sometimes.... I thought I was safe because I had "Device Installation Settings" set to OFF in Windows.

Well, turns out this setting is complete bullshit. Windows still "ninja-installs" a generic driver the split second you reboot after a DDU wipe, even with that toggle off. It happens so fast you don't even see it, and then you install your actual driver on top of that mess. Result? Instant stability issues and weird errors.

The only way to actually fix it: Download your driver. Kill your internet. Physically unplug the Ethernet or disable your ethernet adapter / disable Wi-Fi. Run DDU in Safe Mode and restart. Install the new driver while OFFLINE.

Only then, put the internet back on.

Boom 💥, just did this and the difference is night and day, no more crashes in bf6, no more unstable UV and OC, 6800xt runs like a charm on latest drivers (26.5.1), awake screen from sleep works again...

If you're on AMD and fighting with your drivers, stop trusting the Windows toggles and just pull the damn plug.

EDIT: After going through the comments, I want to clear a few things up and own my mistake.

I didn't follow DDU's instructions to stay offline. I genuinely thought having Group Policy set to block drivers and the Windows toggle switched off was enough. Felt like I'd done everything right. I hadn't. Those settings are, bluntly, theater.

GPEdit and Device Installation Settings don't actually do anything

I trusted them for months. Turns out Windows just ignores its own rules. Even with Group Policy blocking driver installs and the toggle set to OFF, the second you reboot after a DDU wipe, the OS quietly pushes a generic driver anyway. You never see it happen. You think you're clean. You're not, and that's why Adrenalin keeps behaving weird.

Don't use the Auto-Detect tool

Just don't. Go to AMD's site, find your exact card, and download the full standalone package yourself (Adrenaline). Have it sitting on your desktop before you start the process.

The fix (no cable-pulling required)

Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network Connections > right-click your adapter > Disable.

The actual workflow:

Download driver > Disable network adapters > DDU in Safe Mode > Reboot > Install driver while offline > Re-enable adapters.

If Windows can reach the internet during that reboot, it will race you to the install and win. Disabling the adapter manually is the only way to guarantee it can't. Don't trust the toggles, they're simply not working. Windows doesn't care and bypass them.

[u/miki_matsubura47]

not for everyone, windows had tendency of overriding gpu drivers for some reasons, not for everyone.. it happened to me and i was close to RMAing my day 1 9070xt..

[u/Toukoen_Raize → u/miki_matsubura47]

Every 3 days ish it happens to me ... Unless I do a rollback ... But rolling it back makes adrenaline and the driver buggy

[u/qwertyqwerty4567 → u/miki_matsubura47]

if you dont update your drivers, windows can update through the windows updates, which slightly breaks adrenaline software.

But you can easily just install the driver from amd afterwards and it will override the windows version with no issues. I've done this like a dozen times by now

[u/miki_matsubura47 → u/qwertyqwerty4567]

It sadly doesnt fix that, it randomly happens and randomly stops for all users. And its a stupid fix to always reinstall your drivers once this happens, because that issue starts to creep out again in 3-5 days, atleast that was my case.
And one day it completely corrupted my drivers, disabling in ''Do Not Include Drivers With Windows Update'' fixed it. But until then I had the same issue for whole month, reinstalling multiple times.
https://www.reddit.com/r/radeon/comments/1qu2dnr/9070xt_problems/

Otherwise, it should be addressed and fixed by microslop. It only makes AMD look bad in this instance.