AMD's latest driver update, version 26.6.2, is bricking Radeon GPUs on Windows 10 systems -- forcing users to stare at a yellow exclamation mark in Device Manager instead of playing games. The driver, released June 18, was supposed to be a milestone. It brought FSR 4.1 to Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs for the first time, extending AMD's AI-powered upscaling beyond RDNA 4 hardware across more than 300 supported games.
AMD Senior Vice President Jack Huynh announced the rollout on X. Instead, the update triggers a Code 43 error in Windows Device Manager, flagging the GPU with a yellow bang and forcing the system to fall back to the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter. That means no hardware acceleration, no modern games, and no FSR 4.1 -- the very feature the driver was built to deliver.
AMD confirmed the issue on June 23, publishing a support article that reads: "We are aware of an issue where AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 26.6.2 may not function correctly on Windows 10 systems, resulting in a yellow warning on Radeon graphics products in Device Manager." The company's official advisory tells affected users to roll back to Adrenalin Edition 26.5.1, released earlier this month. "Our Engineers are currently investigating this issue and will provide a fix once it is available," the advisory states.
Reports flooded forums after the driver dropped. Affected hardware spans the entire Radeon lineup -- from the RX 9070 XT and RX 9060 down to the RX 6700 XT and even integrated Radeon graphics in Ryzen APUs.
Some users described the driver installing successfully only to fail after the first reboot. Others found that even multiple passes with Display Driver Uninstaller in Safe Mode could not prevent the error. A TechPowerUp survey found roughly 38% of Windows 10 users who installed 26.6.2 experienced the failure, suggesting the bug is configuration-dependent rather than universal.
Windows 11 systems are not impacted. The irony is hard to miss. FSR 4.1 requires Radeon RX 7000 GPUs or newer and Windows 11 24H2 or later for its headline features, yet the driver package was distributed to Windows 10 users where it breaks core GPU functionality.
AMD had redesigned FSR 4.1 specifically for RDNA 3's INT8 architecture -- converting the workload from floating-point to integer-based processing -- to bring the feature to RX 7000 owners who had been waiting months for support. That engineering work is now overshadowed by a driver that can't even load properly.
The company has not provided a timeline for a fix. Users running Windows 10 should avoid the 26.6.2 update entirely and stick with version 26.5.1 until AMD ships a hotfix.
