Windows 10 Lenovo Y40 frequent BSoD and black screen flicker - occasional messages about AMD driver. Any ideas?

Gristly

Commendable
Aug 27, 2016
6
0
1,510
A week ago, my laptop froze up completely. I forced shutdown, and on restart got the Win10 BSoD. This persisted for a while, but the next day I was able to boot windows normally. After 15 minutes however, another BSoD. After that, I booted regularly another time and was able to download Wagnard's tool. Restarted into safe mode, uninstalled the AMD driver, and installed a fresh copy of AMD's most recent driver for my card, the R9 M275X. After that, I was able to boot normally but occasionally got the whole screen except the cursor going black for a few seconds, and a constant message that popped up saying that my AMD driver crashed and then recovered. Other than that it was fine, but on shutdown it bluescreened again. Booted back into safe mode, uninstalled the drivers, and installed the drivers for my card from Lenovo's website. Still getting the black screens, "AMD driver has crashed and recovered" messages, and the occasional bluescreen out of nowhere, or when I try to start an program such as Steam. Not sure what else to try, any ideas? Thank you so much :)

EDIT: I should also mention the battery in this laptop has been very dead for about 4 months - the laptop instantly shuts off if I unplug it. I've had a battery 'in the mail' for 3 months, but it still isn't showing up. Just mentioning this because possibly it could be a power supply issue? I don't think it's likely because the power issue has been around for a long time without the graphics card issue, but just so you know!
 
Solution
I'm not sure what the problem could be but some things to try would be:


  • ■ Get and install BlueScreenView (http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/bluescreenview.html). After your next BSOD, run this program to see what files were the culprit so you can Google for them.
    ■ I kind of doubt it's your battery but one thing you can try is removing the battery entirely, plugging the laptop in, and running it that way, without a battery.
    ■ Get HWMonitor and monitor your temperatures. Google up your specific hardware and see what temperatures people report as normal and see if your hardware is overheating. Might also want to open it up to check for dust and anything that looks off.
    ■ I presume you are not overclocking but if you are, stop...

xPhaze

Honorable
Dec 15, 2012
13
0
10,570
I'm not sure what the problem could be but some things to try would be:


  • ■ Get and install BlueScreenView (http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/bluescreenview.html). After your next BSOD, run this program to see what files were the culprit so you can Google for them.
    ■ I kind of doubt it's your battery but one thing you can try is removing the battery entirely, plugging the laptop in, and running it that way, without a battery.
    ■ Get HWMonitor and monitor your temperatures. Google up your specific hardware and see what temperatures people report as normal and see if your hardware is overheating. Might also want to open it up to check for dust and anything that looks off.
    ■ I presume you are not overclocking but if you are, stop and revert back to stock clocks.
    ■ Try uninstalling your graphics driver and instead installing the one that Lenovo makes available for your specific card on their website or if you had a disk come with your laptop. This driver may be years old but it is made specifically to work with your laptop model so it may cause less issues.
    ■ Try reverting to an older driver AMD makes available.
    ■ I'm not sure if your Intel CPU has an integrated Intel HD Graphics GPU but if it does, try only using that and see if the issue persists. To do so, you would uninstall/disable everything AMD.
 
Solution