Windows Vista on AMD Ryzen mobile Raven Ridge + Vega graphics testing

[TSNH]

I've decided to try out Windows Vista on AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, the Raven Ridge mobile platform. First drivers for their integrated GPU (OEM ones for Windows 10, not straight from AMD) predate 17.10.1 drivers which can be made to work on Vista: https://board.eclipse.cx/viewtopic.php?t=404

I've installed the OS (with Extended Kernel) on a VM and then applied vmdk virtual disk image onto a M.2 SATA SSD which was then installed in the laptop, and booted from it in Legacy/CSM mode

Initially there were some BSODs, but they stopped occuring after I removed optical disk CD drivers from 'c:\Windows\system32\drivers' cdrom.sys and cdfs.sys. If you remember they where one of the causes of BSODs on Ryzen systems. The other one was of course USB controller, but it's clearly not causing issues here, bluescreens were significantly less frequent from the start than on my old Ryzen desktop and after removing those CD drivers stopped occurring completely and the system is fully stable now.
 

Even USB 3 works with @cannonkong's modified drivers https://winraid.level1techs.com/t/solution-win-7-win8-1-x64-ryzen-apu-video-driver/34203?page=1

The only thing that doesn't work yet is the GPU.

Is is officially only compatible with Windows 10 Redstone 1607+, but @cannonkong managed to get is working on Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 Threshold (1507 and 1511) with just an .inf mod. The oldest version of his modded drivers of from 2019 unfortunately so I tried applying simmilar patches to this HP OEM driver from 09.2017 https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/ScopedViewInline.aspx?updateid=808a5b95-4eb0-4be6-82f6-58fad73c2708

I succeeded for Windows 10 Threshold 1511, but on Windows 7 this driver launches successfully, but you can only see distorted image and then nothing on the screen. Despite that that system works, you can change backlight brightness click on things and hear sounds. This issue can be however completely fixed by going into sleep mode and resuming. The GPU works ok after that. On Vista the symptoms are the same as on 7, but sleep mode doesn't work, so you can't use this as a workaround. You can even see Aero working for a moment, and than black screen (you can still hear sounds and interact with the OS).

So a simple tweak could make it work. Do you have any ideas?

EDIT:

I've tested system's stability without GPU drivers installed and it survived all 7 hours of testing, which included 2h of video playback (on Microsoft Basic VGA adapter) and also around 2h of web browsing, it hadn't crashed a single time.

However when I started messing with GPU drivers, a BSOD caused by video drivers would often be followed by another one in a very early boot stage including when entering SafeMode, so I'm not sure anymore.

Perhaps the potential for Ryzen-like BSODs exists, but after removing CD drivers nothing is using system resources in a way that causes BOSDs

Edited July 22 by TSNH
typos

[TSNH]

It worked! I putted it in sleep mode, it looks like Windows does successfully enter sleep mode, but the hardware does not (fans were still on in this "sleep mode"), resuming took around 30 seconds (probably waiting for some timeout), not sure how reproducible this is

UPDATE:

It is definitely reproducible, (I'm writing this post update from my Ryzen laptop on Vista).

The computer does in fact go into sleep it just takes 30-60 seconds again probably there is some minor error and it's probably waiting for some timeout of a minor feature that doesn't work

The driver is not very stable however, after around 15 minutes I got a BSOD of dxgkrnl.sys and ks.sys, likely caused by the driver. Bluescreens are not visible, the screen turns black I'm reading this off MiniDump.

 

About this screenshot: GPU-Z says this is 17.10.1 which corresponds to Windows 7 drivers that I took some files from as replacement for their Windows 10 HP OEM equivalents. The OEM driver alone is identified by GPU-Z as 17.7. Later it turned out that it makes absolutely no difference to the driver's functionality on Vista, so I may as well stay with Windows 10 files.

Edited July 23 by TSNH

[TSNH]

On 7/21/2024 at 7:59 PM, TSNH said:

this driver launches successfully, but you can only see distorted image and then nothing on the screen. Despite that that system works, you can change backlight brightness click on things and hear sounds. This issue can be however completely fixed by going into sleep mode and resuming. The GPU works ok after that. On Vista the symptoms are the same as on 7, but sleep mode doesn't work, so you can't use this as a workaround. You can even see Aero working for a moment, and than black screen (you can still hear sounds and interact with the OS).

So a simple tweak could make it work. Do you have any ideas?

I solved this issue! All you have to do is enable non-GUI boot in msconfig. I don't know why this makes any difference but it does.

[Karla Sleutel]

On 7/21/2024 at 11:49 AM, TSNH said:

It worked! I putted it in sleep mode, it looks like Windows does successfully enter sleep mode, but the hardware does not (fans were still on in this "sleep mode"), resuming took around 30 seconds (probably waiting for some timeout), not sure how reproducible this is

GPU-Z says this is 17.10.1 

GPU-Z also says it supports DirectX12 on Vista?! Really? It's great, then!

[Dixel]

19 hours ago, Karla Sleutel said:

GPU-Z also says it supports DirectX12 on Vista?! Really? It's great, then!

I honestly find it hard to believe, probably a glitch by GPU-Z.

[D.Draker]

11 hours ago, Dixel said:

I honestly find it hard to believe, probably a glitch by GPU-Z.

Agree, but it would be a great breakthrough, so let's dream on!

[TSNH]

7 hours ago, Dixel said:

I honestly find it hard to believe, probably a glitch by GPU-Z

It doesn't support dx12, When you hover over that textbox it explains that it ts only about whether the GPU's hardware supports dx12 (probably takes this info from some list) and it doesn't test whether drivers and OS also do.

As for what works on this driver:

dx9 - works

dx10 - not tested, but should work like dx11

dx11 - works as browser HW acceleration, but not in games.

Vulkan - doesn't work (I made no attempts at fixing it or using VulcanRT installer but it's very low priority thing on this laptop)

OpenGL - not tested yet

Video decoder DXVA - Doesn't work and causes a BSOD when you attempt to use it. Had to remove atiumd6a.dll from system32 and atiumdva.dll from syswow64, so that video playback just falls back to software rendering

OpenCL - doesn't work

Edited July 24 by TSNH

[TSNH]

Actually some of the driver instabilities are not Vista - specific and occur just because those early drivers were really buggy even on Wndows 10 https://community.amd.com/t5/drivers-software/crashing-video-driver-ryzen-5-2500u-vega-8-hp-x360-laptop/td-p/294858

So now I'm using this Acer OEM (not HP) driver as it's more stable. 

https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=22.19.655.5888

It it a slightly newer version and doesn't feature JPEG acceleration which may have been causing issues on the HP one.

So now the driver is stable after it has been loaded, but can still crash on boot and shutdown

Edited July 26 by TSNH

[TSNH]

I got a driver from 8 march 2019 working.

https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=23.20.826.9472

It is actually a driver with from early 2018, but patched with fixes till 2019, so all the issues of the driver being just bad should be resolved.

I actually still sometimes fails to load on startup and hangs, but I don't think this can be resolved in the inf file or if it's actually driver's fault and not running on Ryzen (this hang is not a BSOD but idk). The performance is better that with the old driver.

After the startup the driver is 100% stable with feature set described in one of my previous posts.

To install it I'm using modified version of this Acer OEM inf from the previous post so it's not based on @Cannoncong's inf except for one fix that he figured out:

Quote

[atikmdag_MSIX_HardwareDeviceSettings]
HKR,"Interrupt Management\MessageSignaledInterruptProperties",MessageNumberLimit,0x00010001,1

I'm going to release the modified driver soon as I don't think anything else can be improved without modifying the .sys files.

Edited July 30 by TSNH