After replacing my RX 6800 XT with an ASUS Radeon RX 9070 XT, Windows 11 becomes almost completely unusable after I log in. The desktop appears normally, but clicks do nothing, applications won't open, and I can't access Task Manager, Settings, or the restart menu. I have to hold the physical power button to shut the PC down.
I booted into Safe Mode, used DDU to remove the old graphics drivers, and installed the new drivers manually. That made the system work temporarily, but the freezing returned after the next shutdown. System Restore behaved the same way: everything worked until the computer was powered off and started again. I've also updated the motherboard BIOS and chipset drivers without fixing the problem.
The system uses a Ryzen 7 7700, MSI MAG B650 Tomahawk WiFi, 32GB of Corsair DDR5, a Corsair RM850x (2024) power supply, and two NVMe drives. Could the integrated graphics setting, Windows driver updates, Fast Startup, or something else be causing this input freeze after the GPU swap?
4 Answers
If the software fixes don’t hold, test with a spare drive and perform a clean Windows installation. That helps determine whether the existing installation has a corrupted driver or startup configuration rather than a hardware fault.
Also disable Fast Startup in Windows’ power settings. It can preserve a bad driver or hardware state between shutdowns, which would explain why System Restore and a clean driver installation only work until the next power cycle.
Check the BIOS setting for the CPU’s integrated graphics. On some systems, leaving it on Auto can cause conflicts after installing a discrete GPU. Changing the setting from UMA Auto to Disabled fixed the unresponsive desktop and allowed applications and Steam to load normally.
Prevent Windows from automatically replacing the graphics driver. After disabling automatic driver updates, boot into Safe Mode, run DDU again, and install the GPU driver manually. Windows-installed display drivers can sometimes cause problems after a card replacement.
I installed the driver manually after using DDU, but disabling the integrated graphics was the change that finally resolved my issue.
This appears to have fixed it for me. I disabled the integrated graphics in the MSI BIOS, and the system has stayed responsive through several restarts.