I recently upgraded from dual Sapphire 4850s to a single Sapphire 7870 Ghz Flex. I uninstalled my drivers and CCC and reinstalled everything, and since then, I have experiencing Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe) crashes that have something to do with atidxx64.exe according to event viewer.

There doesn't appear to be any single thing that triggers it, although it is more common when playing video or gaming, but it can happen at idle, and even happens when I initially login to windows sometimes. These login crashes are especially problematic because dwm.exe will not restart (Even when I try to manually start it) and I have to reboot to get Aero back.

This didn't happen at all with my 4850s.

Anyway, here's my system

Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition Flex Edition

Catalyst Version: 12.10. Was 12.10 before I reinstalled, and was set to auto update.

OS: Windows 7 64bit

Issue Details listed above

Motherboard: Gigabyte EP45T-USB3P Socket 775, drivers and bios up to date

Power Supply: Thermaltake TRX-1200M 1200w

Next question: Where does one check on the status of a support ticket? I submitted my issue to AMD tech support, and got a canned email with a ticket number, but no links and I can't find anything on the site. Where do they hide it?

I'm not sure about your second post...but let me throw an option out for you on your first post...

• Download CCC again (to rule out corruption in the download that you currently have)
• Download/install Driver Fusion
• Uninstall CCC completely
• Reboot into safe mode
• Right-click Driver Fusion choose "Run as Administrator"
• Select AMD Graphics
• Select Analyze
• Select Clean
• Reboot when prompted (into your regular OS)
• Install CCC
• Reboot 2-3 times before opening CCC up to allow it to complete configuring itself in the background.
• Re-test

The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.
Requiescat In Pace AMD Processor Forums | Member since: 1/19/2009 | Post count: 4142
Please don't PM me with questions, instead create a thread so that everyone can assist and benefit from the knowledge provided. Thanks in advance!

Ok, I did everything in the list, still got dwm.exe crash, and it actually got worse, it now crashes every time I log into windows, but I found out that restarting the service from services works, whereas just starting dwm.exe doesn't.

This is what event viewer shows:

Faulting application name: Dwm.exe, version: 6.1.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bc541

Faulting module name: atidxx64.dll, version: 8.17.10.453, time stamp: 0x5064fbe3

Exception code: 0xc0000005

Fault offset: 0x0000000000402afd

Faulting process id: 0xb68

Faulting application start time: 0x01cdb807dc699245

Faulting application path: C:\Windows\system32\Dwm.exe

Faulting module path: C:\Windows\system32\atidxx64.dll

Report Id: 1e02a1d9-23fb-11e2-bb05-001060a489de

On a whim, I ran through Windows Repair just in case something was wrong, and I STILL get the error. I will try this removal procedure again tomorrow, but I suspect something is either wrong with the card or the driver, and my gut tells me the driver is the issue.

have you try installing another driver beside 12.10 ?, if not try the older driver and see if it solve the problem.

I currently use the 12.8 driver.

Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H, Intel i5 3570k,  2x4 GB Kingston, Sapphire HD 7950 Vapor-X, Seasonic M12II 850W, Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Seagate 500GB, Seagate 2TB

^ That would be my next suggestion.   Just make sure that you use my previous post when you do it so there is nothing left over from the current driver to cause conflicts.

If that does correct the issue, I would request that you submit a ticket with AMD so that they are aware of the issue and can hopefully provide a fix in a future driver release.

**STICKY** | AMD ISSUE REPORTING FORM
Reproducible issues can be reported here. 

The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.
Requiescat In Pace AMD Processor Forums | Member since: 1/19/2009 | Post count: 4142
Please don't PM me with questions, instead create a thread so that everyone can assist and benefit from the knowledge provided. Thanks in advance!

Hmm, I hadn't thought about switching driver versions, though I used to do that all the time because of issues just like this.

Incidentally, I have already submitted a ticket with AMD, which is why I was asking if anyone knew how to check on the status of a ticket.

I'll run the clean procedure again when I get home and install 12.8 and see if that fixes things.

Thanks for the help guys,

Keith

Next stupid question: Where does AMD hide the older drivers?

nm, grabbed them from guru3d

Ok, after all this, still no luck. after wiping 12.10 and installing 12.8, windows booted fine, and ran for several hours, then I decided to try out Sleeping Dogs (Which seems to cause dwm.exe crashes most often) and made it 2 hours before I got one.

I was so getting my hopes up. it's starting to look like maybe the card is bad. This is so disappointing.

Anyone have any suggestions? I've run out of ideas. 12.10 doesn't work, 12.8 doesn't work, Windows Repair didn't help and I'm 99.999% sure I don't have any viruses/malware.

thanks,

Keith

Could be your card, i suggest getting a replacement for your card since it's the only thing change from your PC before getting those error right ?

Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H, Intel i5 3570k,  2x4 GB Kingston, Sapphire HD 7950 Vapor-X, Seasonic M12II 850W, Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Seagate 500GB, Seagate 2TB

That is the only thing that has changed, everything else is the same.

But I don't want to hear that. I want my stuff to work right now, and I certainly don't want to wait for a replacement. I needed a replacement when I ordered this card 2 weeks ago, not 3 weeks from now.

Sorry, that sounds a bit whiny, but I really don't need this right now.

Hmm... okay. try this, reduce the core clock on the card, try drop it by let's say 100mhz, and if it doesn't produce an error try raising the clock little by little until you finally getting those error again. 

might not work since i use this method to avoid the "driver not responding and has recovered" error on my HD 6870 before finally getting a replacement. it's a different kind of error from yours i think, but it's better than nothing.

well that's the best i can do since you don't want to go through the replacement procedure.

Good luck

Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H, Intel i5 3570k,  2x4 GB Kingston, Sapphire HD 7950 Vapor-X, Seasonic M12II 850W, Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Seagate 500GB, Seagate 2TB

I had issues with dwm.exe and BF3 for a bit and the workaround that I found for my situation was to do the following:

• Right-click on the game's ".exe" (or game shortcut)
• Choose properties
• Select the "Compatibility" tab
• Put a check in the box for the "Disable desktop composition" item
• OK

Example:

Now when you start the game it will turn the dwm service off first which should allow you to play the game fine and when you quit the game the dwm service should start up automatically again.

I have NVidia cards so I can't say for sure that this will correct your issue or not but it sounds like a viable work-around for you, albiet, not ideal.

The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.
Requiescat In Pace AMD Processor Forums | Member since: 1/19/2009 | Post count: 4142
Please don't PM me with questions, instead create a thread so that everyone can assist and benefit from the knowledge provided. Thanks in advance!

Well,

I finally got a reply from my ATI ticket, and their recommendation is to go back to 12.3, and I submitted that ticket before I tried 12.8.

They also recommended using WICU and deleting several directories from safe mode. I'm going to give that a try.

Stargaz3rr: I haven't got a clue how to do that reduce the clock speed, is that done through CCC?

Canis-X: That may reduce the errors in Sleeping Dogs, but they also happen randomly as well, in fact it happened when I was replying to the tech support ticket, and all I had open was a web browser.

I'll let yall know how this turns out.

Keith