TsarMaxim

Hello everyone. As most of you probably know, Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 are officially EOL as of January 14 of this year. I will continue using them, however I will not be using either as my primary operating system and I will be offline most of the time. I just need them for certain things that do not work well on Linux. Originally I intended to install 7 on new PC, but decided to install Server 2008 R2 Standard so I could avoid the spyware. However, Radeon drivers are not working. I installed the Windows 7 versions of drivers for all other hardware and so far all of them are working (besides some weirdness with USB due to the absence of some USB Host drivers for Matisse CPUs) besides Radeon. The automatic detection version of the driver from AMD's Web site returns an error saying it couldn't detect the GPU. The full offline installer appears to install successfully, but Device Manager still shows the standard VGA driver and judging from graphics performance and that it will not let me switch to the Aero theme, the Radeon driver obviously is not working properly. Although Radeon Software is listed in Control Panel when I go to uninstall it, I cannot find where to launch the software. Snappy Driver Installer also fails to install the driver, despite succeeding to install drivers for all other hardware. I already tried a fresh install, with all of the Windows updates other than those that failed to install. GPU works perfectly in Linux and Windows 10. Graphics Card: PowerColor Radeon RX 580 8GB If I can't get it to work, I will install Windows 7, but I would prefer to avoid it due to Microsoft forcing 7 users to switch to 10.

Thank you for your reply. I guess I will use a hair dryer if I have to uninstall this CPU. My question is are there any troubleshooting steps I can take to make sure everything is working properly? I remember Linus saying in a video that if a pin is damaged, a certain PCIe lane or memory channel might not work, etc. Or, if the pin is unused, it will not do anything, but it could be used for something in a future BIOS update. Is there any way I can check?

I was replacing the stock paste on my Ryzen 5 3600X with something better. I unscrewed the Wraith Spire and pulled it out, but the CPU was completely glued to the cooler by thermal paste, and when I removed the cooler, the CPU came out of the socket with it, without me raising the retention arm. I had to use a hair dryer to liquify the thermal paste so I could remove the CPU from the cooler. I cleaned off the old paste and applied the new paste. I then installed the CPU back into the socket, but the corner with the triangle would not go in. I noticed some of the pins were bent. I bent the pins back with tweezers from my iFixit kit. The CPU went in normally. But when I powered the system on, the speaker beeped quietly three times, and the debug LEDs for RAM and CPU lit up on my MSI B450M Bazooka V2. I tried turning it on multiple times, but the result was the same. I unplugged the CPU power cable, then tried again to see if the CPU was even making a difference. This time, only the CPU LED lit up, meaning the CPU was making a difference because the RAM LED did not light up. I removed the CPU from the socket and tried bending the pins back into position again. I noticed the CPU was permanently damaged this time because installation into the socket required a little bit of force. But now, it's working just as it was before, and I'm typing this right now using that CPU. None of the LEDs lit up, and all of the memory is detected and working at the proper speed, 3000 MHz with XMP enabled. The only thing that changed is the CPU now requires force to install. (I removed it from the socket and installed it multiple times, and the pins did not appear to be bent, but I had to push down a little while installing it again.) I am not sure if the CPU is damaged, or the socket on the motherboard. Is there anything I should do to make sure everything is fine? Everything is working right now.