Warning to AMD Users running Catalyst Beta drivers

[Master Disaster]

DO NOT USE CATALYST 15.3 BETA ON YOUR SYSTEM, IT HAS THE POTENTIAL TO DESTROY YOYR WINDOWS INSTALL IF YOU EVER UNINSTALL.

Here's the full story..

I had tried to run 3D Marks new API test but couldn't get the DX12 test to run so I reported it as a bug to FM. They replied in a matter of minutes saying that Catalyst 15.3 doesn't support WDDM2.0 or DX12 and I had to uninstall catalyst then obtain it again from windows update. OK I thought, nice speedy response from them, let's give it a try.

Bad idea!

After removing Catalyst 15.3 bad things happened. I noticed Windows update kept failing giving me an error code (strangely it did the driver fine but failed on the actual updates?) so I hit Google where it became apparent that while I could browse the internet it was running mega slow compared to usual. The error code turned out to be because of Proxy, VPN or Tunneling (of which I use none) so I opened the Network & Sharing centre and tried to open the Adapters page but was given a generic "Network Connection: An Unknown Error Has Occurred" dialogue box.

WTF man...

Hit Google again and this new error is caused by DLLs being unregistered, i followed the official MS Technet page and regsrv'd a load of DLL files finally allowing me to open my Adapter List but I still got the same message when I tried to open the Adapter properties.

For fuck sakes

Hit Google again, regged some more DLLs, reset WinHTTP & WinSOCK and ran a MS FixIT wizard from Technet but didn't fix the problem.

Hit Google again and found a guy who said he'd had a similar issue with an older Catalyst Beta and he linked to an article with a decent description of the cause (because Windows was unable to process some critical services) and a registry fix. Tried it, no change.

Hit Services.msc to find almost half my Windows services were showing the description of "Unable to process service - An error has occurred", were stopped and would not start when I tried to.

Hit Google again, found a lot of people kicking off about this error but no one had found either the cause or a fix however they'd all had Beta Catalyst drivers on their systems and uninstalled them.

Net result was 2 hours to reinstall Windows 10 from scratch.

Thank you very much AMD.

You have been warned guys.

[qwertywarrior]

"2 hours to reinstall Windows 10 from scratch."

2?????

[TristanK]

Well to be fair you were using beta drivers...sooo no one guaranties they will work or makes you update to beta

[Master Disaster]

"2 hours to reinstall Windows 10 from scratch."

2?????

Not just Windows obviously, first I had to get the ISO for 10041 and copy it to my USB then afterwards there's drivers, critical apps, steam, origin and a few other apps too. It was about 2 hours from start to finish.

Well to be fair you were using beta drivers...sooo no one guaranties they will work or makes you update to beta

Agreed, I only blame myself however if I can stop it from happening to someone else with this post then that's good.