My computer has been freezing for quite a while whenever I Alt+Tab in or out of a game, and it recently happened while closing one. Both monitors become unresponsive, with one sometimes going black, keyboard input stops working, and audio continues briefly. I normally have to press the reset button, but this time I waited one or two minutes and the system eventually recovered. During the freeze, I could still control Spotify from my phone, and after recovery the queued keyboard actions happened. Windows then reported that AMD Software detected a driver timeout. I have already used DDU to remove and reinstall the graphics drivers. What else should I check?
1 Answer
That sounds like a graphics-driver timeout rather than a complete system lockup. Since DDU did not solve it, check for BIOS and chipset-driver updates as well as the GPU driver, and temporarily disable overlays and hardware acceleration in apps such as Steam, Discord, browsers, and AMD Software. It is also worth testing a different display cable or refresh rate, turning off FreeSync/Enhanced Sync, and checking GPU temperatures and power connections. If it still happens, try running the game with a frame-rate limit and test the system with another game to see whether the issue is software-specific or points to the GPU, memory, or power supply.
I regularly check my graphics and chipset drivers, so they should already be current. I will check the BIOS, overlays, display settings, and temperatures next.