• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

DDU Isn't Always Enough

S

sk3tch

Supreme [H]ardness
2FA
Joined
Sep 5, 2008
Messages
4,564
Yes - Windows 11 is extremely resilient these days...but take it from me - if you're getting stuttering or other issues that do not match whatever YouTube videos you can dig up that is similar to your hardware - just do an OS reinstall.

I've probably had over 20 video cards this generation - so I go from green to red to green quite a bit. Most of the time - DDU prior to the install works great. Sometimes it doesn't.

My last one:
- MSI Gaming X RTX 4090 installed.
- Run DDU (latest) - power down
- Install XFX Merc 310 7900 XT
- Install AMD Adrenalin drivers (latest)
- Choppy AF - pull hair out - get annoyed etc - "dealt with it" for days and it was OK but just off based on what I had seen.
- Booted to safe mode
- Ran DDU for NVIDIA only to hopefully clear out any ghosts
- Test it out - less choppy! Still..not great.
- Full Win11 Pro reinstall (so fast these days)
- Fresh drivers
- Works fantastic.

I guess my point is don't be too stubborn thinking you can hack this fix or disable this Windows protection feature or virualization whiz bang - just reinstall the OS if your performance clearly doesn't match what's out there.
 
Furious_Styles said:
Sucks. Rarely is an OS reinstall necessary. In fact I just migrated my 9900k/z370 to a 7800x3d/b650 w/o issue. Also went from SSD->NVME.
Click to expand...
Yeah I was in total denail. I did the same with my son's rig - AM4 to AM5 without a single issue. Then you get some funky graphics driver that hangs around and causes havoc. Things are sooo smooth now after the fresh reinstall. With cloud everything these days and ninite it really isn't horrible. :)
 
chameleoneel said:
I always recommend reinstalling windows when switching between Nvidia and AMD. And when switching motherboards. And people contest that every time I say it. I have seen too many hard to chase issues.
Click to expand...
Because most of the time it's just extra wasted time. I stopped doing it during win 7, and somewhat even back with XP. Unfortunately I can't disable the onboard GPU via my bios so no matter what I've got AMD and Nvidia on my current set up.
 
chameleoneel said:
I always recommend reinstalling windows when switching between Nvidia and AMD. And when switching motherboards. And people contest that every time I say it. I have seen too many hard to chase issues.
Click to expand...
Completely unnecessary.

DDU is unnecessary unless you run into a problem with a driver. I haven't used that since probably 2008 or so. Granted I've been running Nvidia that whole time... Last Ati card was the 9700Pro before AMD bought them. Not that Nvidia drivers have never had a problem, but never had one that crashed the OS so badly that it required a re-install to resolve...

This OS started life as Windows 7, then upgraded to Windows 10, then converted mbr2gpt, enabled UEFI boot so I could also enable resize bar, then upgraded to Windows 11.

Been fine the whole time.

When swapping to a new mobo, if it is the same brand as previous mobo, the soundcard and nic drivers might even be the same. Last time around upgraded the onboard audio ahead of the mobo switch. Intel network driver already supported the newer nic model too.
After switching, windows boots, finds all of the new hardware, then wants a reboot. Log back in, go to device manager - show hidden devices. This lets you see all of the old hardware bits. Can uninstall drivers (but that isn't needed unless Windows 11 complains about a driver being incompatible with the Memory Integrity feature), as well as delete from Device Manager all of the old hardware, which for me is typically only the mobo components and maybe onboard nics, and audio.

All cleaned up, and much faster than reinstalling everything.
 
lol.

It is a bit technical and not everyone has that experience. The hardware cleanup isn't actually necessary, but does get the system close to a freshly installed place as far as drivers go.

If you don't dig into the operation of the OS, I can understand just wiping it and starting over.

I suspect the AMD drivers (mobo and/or gpu drivers) are the reason you end up doing this, as this isn't the first or even second time I have heard other users here state that something with the AMD drivers crashed the OS so bad they had to reinstall.
 
chameleoneel said:
I always recommend reinstalling windows when switching between Nvidia and AMD. And when switching motherboards. And people contest that every time I say it. I have seen too many hard to chase issues.
Click to expand...
I'm all about clean starts when it makes sense but a GPU swap is definitely not one of those times.

Anyway, DDU is almost always enough when the issue is specific to GPU drivers/software. If that doesn't fix it, the issue is elsewhere.
 
When something is acting funky and nothing seems to fix it, a clean OS install can be a lifesaver. Plus, it's easier/quicker than ever if you use something like Macrium Reflect to back things up first. If a clean insteall doesn't fix something, I can reload my previous image in like 20 minutes.
 
criccio said:
I'm all about clean starts when it makes sense but a GPU swap is definitely not one of those times.

Anyway, DDU is almost always enough when the issue is specific to GPU drivers/software. If that doesn't fix it, the issue is elsewhere.
Click to expand...
In my case - NVIDIA to AMD - DDU didn't fix. Reinstalled OS - all good. No reason to worry about if the issue was elsewhere - I'm back to gaming with fluidity.

Point of my message is to not have crazy pride unnecessarily while you try all these hacks and ultimate cause issues down the road elsewhere (like diminished security, for example).
 
If DDU doesn't do enough, then check device manager for hidden devices and uninstall all of them. Any remnants that might be in the registry or system files are not used if they have no device attached to them.
 
Domingo said:
When something is acting funky and nothing seems to fix it, a clean OS install can be a lifesaver. Plus, it's easier/quicker than ever if you use something like Macrium Reflect to back things up first. If a clean insteall doesn't fix something, I can reload my previous image in like 20 minutes.
Click to expand...
Another vote for macrium reflect. It's what I used to port my install from SSD->NVME.
 
GoodBoy said:
lol.

It is a bit technical and not everyone has that experience. The hardware cleanup isn't actually necessary, but does get the system close to a freshly installed place as far as drivers go.

If you don't dig into the operation of the OS, I can understand just wiping it and starting over.

I suspect the AMD drivers (mobo and/or gpu drivers) are the reason you end up doing this, as this isn't the first or even second time I have heard other users here state that something with the AMD drivers crashed the OS so bad they had to reinstall.
Click to expand...

Well, you could enlighten people by posting information or links. This is pretty vague, and unless you provide something recent it could also be outdated.

That said, I wonder how much of a fresh installation's performance is caused simply by it being a fresh installation in general. Over time, any computer just picks up all kinds of garbage and baggage as you install some crap, some of which is just running inefficiently and eating up memory or cycles in a bad way. A fresh OS gets rid of that, too.

Personally I've been able to use a single operating system even through when I swapped between Intel and AMD, AMD and Nvidia, etc, and I don't think I've really had much instability. Weird stutters and stuff, though, yeah. I usually attribute that to a "stale" OS though more than anything. If any of you are fishkeepers, you've probably heard of a term called "Old Tank Syndrome". The rising of Nitrates due to gradual and constant garbage accrual is to me essentially the same as what happens to an OS over time. But there are no water changes for that unless you're an OS architect and/or driver writer and know exactly what you're looking for. All that most people can do is just dump out the whole tank and refill it.
 
Last edited:
Tell you what will make a difference, deleting the old configs of your games when you swap gpu's. I keep freshly downloaded games on a backup drive, drag them over, update and launch.
 
Clear game file caches, game save profiles may have selective GPU path which you can edit, edit manually the register, clear out Nvidia/AMD graphical stuff left behind, DDU should do this, but I've found not always. If still funky, a new Windows Install should not hurt and point if you have a hardware conflict/problem.
 
At least on my end of things, the bigger culprit for issues = AMD's Chipset Drivers. Those things have been a thorn in my side seemingly forever. Feels like every year or so they'll decide that they don't want to update for whatever reason. I'll try to uninstall/reinstall, but they won't do that, either. It just fails without warning. Reinstalling the OS on top of itself and Microsoft's Uninstall Troubleshooter can't even fix it. Nothing else is ever having any issues, just those damned chipset drivers. A full Windows reinstall is the only solution I've found.
 
Domingo said:
At least on my end of things, the bigger culprit for issues = AMD's Chipset Drivers. Those things have been a thorn in my side seemingly forever. Feels like every year or so they'll decide that they don't want to update for whatever reason. I'll try to uninstall/reinstall, but they won't do that, either. It just fails without warning. Reinstalling the OS on top of itself and Microsoft's Uninstall Troubleshooter can't even fix it. Nothing else is ever having any issues, just those damned chipset drivers. A full Windows reinstall is the only solution I've found.
Click to expand...
I have 2 different x570 and a b650 and none of them have this problem.
 
AMD Cleanup Utility works better than DDU for me. My last driver install my performance was cut in half just using DDU's latest version. I used to swear by DDU, but if you have performance issues or crashing with a driver install after DDU, it likely didn't get everything and you need to run AMD cleanup utility. I used to run both, but it seems like the utility does the job.

Reinstalling the OS is a pain in the ass, I have too many repositories and config I have to do each time. If there's a good way to automate reinstalling all of my software + github repos + plastic repos then sure. I switched motherboards recently from b550 to X670e, just uninstalled the old drivers and removed old cruft through device manager / registry and the upgrade was smooth on windows 10.
 
the only thing that works good on ddu is starting it in advanced mode, then removing your driver in windows safe mode
 
I can't remember the last time I actually needed to use DDU. This isn't pre-2010. It's rarely necessary. Having to reinstall the OS over video card drivers is even more rare.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top