A Radeon background process called atieclxx.exe can write to your system drive nonstop, even when the PC is idle. AMD says the fix is coming in Adrenalin 26.11.1 later this month. Here's how to see if your rig is affected and what your options are until then.
If you game on an AMD Radeon card, your graphics driver might be quietly chewing through your SSD. AMD has confirmed a bug in its Adrenalin drivers that makes a background process write to the system drive nonstop on some PCs, even when the machine is sitting idle. A fix is planned for Adrenalin 26.11.1, which AMD expects to release later in November, according to VideoCardz.
The culprit is the AMD External Events Client Module, which runs as atieclxx.exe. It’s part of the AMD External Events Utility, a service that handles display jobs like detecting monitors and responding to Radeon software hotkeys. On affected systems, users have measured it writing between 0.3 MB/s and 1.5 MB/s, with one Reddit user reporting a sustained 5 MB/s. TechPowerUp names the current drivers, Adrenalin 26.10.1 and 26.10.2, as affected.
That sounds small until you do the math. At 5 MB/s, that’s about 432 GB written per day and close to 13 TB a month if it never stops. One user on X, Tomasz Gawroński, logged 19.5 GB of writes in 12 hours. Another Radeon owner claimed the bug has been eating “1% of my SSD health every month for 16 months,” as Tom’s Hardware reports. That claim hasn’t been confirmed, and SSDs use caching and wear leveling, so not every byte the OS reports turns into wear on the flash chips. But nobody wants a driver writing to their drive for no reason, especially with SSD prices where they are.
How to check your PC right now
It doesn’t hit every Radeon system. Some users on 26.10.2 see nothing unusual. Here’s how to find out in under a minute:
- Press Win + R, type resmon and hit Enter.
- Open the Disk tab.
- Sort the list by Write (B/sec).
- Look for atieclxx.exe writing constantly while you’re not doing anything. Tom’s Hardware also flags atiesrxx.exe as one to watch.
If it’s quiet, you’re fine. Just update to 26.11.1 when it lands.
If you’re affected
Users have reported two temporary workarounds, and both come with a catch. You can disable the AMD External Events Utility in Windows Services, but that can break Adrenalin hotkeys and some display functions. Or you can turn off Resizable BAR in your BIOS, which can cost you gaming performance. VideoCardz says neither works in every case. TechPowerUp’s advice is that it’s best to wait for the official driver. Our take: if resmon shows heavy writes on your system, disabling the service for a couple of weeks is the smaller sacrifice. If it’s barely ticking, leave everything alone and wait for the update.
Radeon owners, what did resmon show you?
Vote and see what other Xbox fans think.
Like having a say? Get OnPoint Weekly or argue it out on Discord.
AMD knew in October
AMD has been on this for a while. A company rep acknowledged the reports on AMD’s community forum on October 21: “Yes. We’re looking into it with the aim to resolve it in a future driver release.” Another rep, AMD_Vik, later said on Reddit that the problem appears to involve an interaction between the External Events Utility and Microsoft’s PCIe filter driver, that a fix had been submitted, and that 26.11.1 should resolve it.
Credit where it’s due, AMD owned it publicly. But a month-plus from acknowledgment to fix is a long time for a bug that writes to your drive around the clock, and it lands days after Lisa Su called AMD “a data center first company”. Radeon owners who paid good money for their cards deserve faster turnaround than that. Check your PC today, and we’ll let you know when 26.11.1 is out.
Image: OnPoint 4 Gamers
Sources
- VideoCardz: AMD confirms Radeon driver bug causing constant SSD writes, fix planned for Adrenalin 26.11.1
- Tom’s Hardware: AMD admits GPU driver bug is writing data continuously, wearing out SSDs
- TechPowerUp: AMD Confirms Excessive SSD Writes in Radeon Drivers, Fix Coming with Adrenalin 26.11.1
- X: Tomasz Gawroński on atieclxx.exe writes
- PCWorld: AMD confirms bug causing excessive SSD wear
- OnPoint 4 Gamers: AMD “data center first”: gaming revenue down 40%
