Microsoft’s latest Windows 11 mishap causes havoc with AMD graphics cards

Windows 11 is causing trouble for some users with AMD graphics cards, thanks to antics involving installing an outdated driver for Team Red’s GPUs.

What’s happening here is that Windows Update is going ahead with an automatic driver ‘update’ that actually installs an older graphics driver.

Windows Latest explains that it has received reports from readers, and via its forums, complaining about the issue, and also there’s a post on Reddit with some affected Windows 11 users making their feelings known, too.

Those hit by the glitch get an error message from AMD’s Adrenalin software informing them: “Windows Update may have automatically replaced your AMD Graphics driver. Hence, the version of AMD Software you have launched is not compatible with your currently installed AMD Graphics driver.”

In other words, Windows 11 has installed a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) driver, but this is an old version and incompatible with the AMD Adrenalin suite.

The good news is that it’s easy enough to fix this problem, as we’ll discuss next.

Analysis: A fairly easy fix – but don’t forget the extra step

The cure, fortunately, is relatively simple. You need to download the latest AMD Adrenalin driver for starters – then uninstall the current driver, and reinstall the new AMD driver. (Some also advise disconnecting from the internet while uninstalling and reinstalling the graphics driver in this way).

The next and very important step to take is to turn off Windows Update’s automatic graphics driver updates, to avoid this happening again. To do that, in the search box (taskbar), type ‘Device installation settings’ and click on this when it pops up in the panel above.

You’ll be presented with a question asking if you want to use automatic downloads for hardware manufacturers’ apps, to which you should reply ‘no’ (even though it says your device may not work as expected – don’t worry about that). Then click ‘Save Changes’ and the automatic graphics driver update will no longer happen. (If you don’t do this, you might find that Windows 11 changes the driver again, even after you’ve reverted it – and so on, ad nauseum, until Microsoft sorts out whatever the issue is here.)

Why is this happening? Good question, it’s a bit of an odd one. There’s clearly been a mistake somewhere at Microsoft, or maybe something has gone awry with the driver supplied by AMD. Hopefully, the situation will be rectified soon enough, but at least you can cure the problem manually as described above.