For the last 3-4 months, maybe even more, my PC has been an absolute nightmare.

I've been getting:

• Constant random hard crashes
• Spontaneous and sudden full system reboots with no warning, as if someone had pulled the plug and then it would restart itself... gaslighting me as if nothing happened
• Visual corruption/glitching
• Split-second BSOD images before the PC instantly restarted
• General instability that seemed completely random and completely unusable on some days

After months of troubleshooting, swapping around hardware, constantly DDUing and reinstalling drivers, reverting Windows updates, and almost throwing the PC out the window many times, I finally found what I believe is the culprit!

Windows 11 was silently installing its own graphics driver through Windows Update on top of AMD drivers. And it was doing it again and again and again, every single time my system turned on.

Every time I thought I had a clean AMD installation, Windows would install its own display driver in the background. I ended up with overlapping and conflicting drivers, which caused insane instability.

If you're experiencing similar symptoms, or you simply want to stop Windows from interfering with your GPU drivers, this is what finally fixed it for me. It's a little time consuming, but bear with and trust the process, I luckily have now been using my PC for around a week and haven't crashed a single time, everything seems perfectly stable again, (touch wood T~T).

Steps

1. Boot into Safe Mode and disconnect from the internet.

Unplug Ethernet or Wi-Fi adapters if able.

Do not reconnect to the internet until the very end.

2. Run DDU in safe mode and restart.

Boot into Safe Mode, run Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), then restart.

3. Device Manager.

Press Win + R, Type:

 devmgmt.msc

Go to: Display adapters → Your GPU → Properties → Driver

If available, click "Roll Back Driver". If it isn't, just skip this step.

4. Disable automatic device driver installation.

Press Win + R, type:

sysdm.cpl

Go to:

Hardware → Device Installation Settings

Select:

>No (your system might not work as expected)

Save the changes.

5. Disable driver updates through Group Policy.

(Windows Pro, Enterprise and Education only, all others in next step.)

Press Win + R, type:

gpedit.msc

Go to: Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → Windows Components → Windows Update

Open:

>Do not include drivers with Windows Updates

Set it to Enabled, then Apply and OK.

6. Disable driver updates through Registry Editor.

(All Win Versions)

Press Win + R, type:

regedit

Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate

If WindowsUpdate doesn't exist, create it.

Create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value called:

ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate

Set its value to:

1

7. Restart your PC.

(This applies the changes).

8. Reboot into Safe Mode and run DDU again.

This ensures any remaining driver remnants are removed before installing AMD driver.
Restart afterwards and boot into Windows normally.

9. Install your AMD driver.

Install whichever driver version is considered the most stable for your GPU.

10. Final restart and reconnect to the internet.

After installing the AMD driver, restart your PC.
Once you're back in Windows as normal, you can safely reconnect to the internet.

It's definitely a tedious process, but my PC has gone from constant crashes and random reboots to being completely stable.

If you've been fighting mysterious AMD driver crashes, it's worth checking whether Windows Update is quietly replacing or stacking drivers behind the scenes.

Hopefully this saves someone else the months of frustration I went through.

If anyone gets stuck on any of the steps, leave a comment and I can try to help if I can.