What is this driver for?

AmdTools64.sys

Most I have found is its for cool & quiet on AMD Motherboards

I have it on mine but then I have an AMD system, so it makes sense.


The main reason I ask is I keep finding it on Intel systems with Nvidia GPU and I have to wonder why? Amd drivers shouldn't be talking to Intel BIOS?
none of the systems ever had AMD cards or had installs moved after fact.

Colif said:

AmdTools64.sys

Most I have found is its for cool & quiet on AMD Motherboards

I have it on mine but then I have an AMD system, so it makes sense.

The main reason I ask is I keep finding it on Intel systems with Nvidia GPU and I have to wonder why? Amd drivers shouldn't be talking to Intel BIOS?
none of the systems ever had AMD cards or had installs moved after fact.

Click to expand...

That's a chipset driver. Only seen it on systems with AMD Motherboard + CPU.

I help figure out BSOD elsewhere and I have seen at least 3 Intel PC in recent months with that driver on them, running at time of crash. just searching there I can see it going back to 2020. (search may not work)

I am starting to wonder if its part of windows, in which case I will ignore it.

Without appropriate hardware (on an Intel motherboard + CPU) - it does nothing (lacks the inf to trigger/enable said drivers). That's like placing a bus driver in an airplane - my dude wouldn't even know where to start, so he's just standing there. :)

Sometimes Windows also installs inappropriate/unrelated drivers for a given system. Tho, usually - in Windows Update they're available as Optional Updates. Also, why it's recommended to avoid the driver updates - displayed in Optional Updates.

its just odd it runs at all. If it doesn't have the hardware, It shouldn't be able to be installed. It should have seen it had nothing to install on.
There are plenty of drivers on windows without hardware but they don't run.

A number of basic drivers are built into Windows so they don't have to write a number of OS's. Other than taking up space on the drive without something to talk to they do nothing.
Think them as birds flying around, yes you can get rid of them but is it really worth your time and effort to do it? Just ignore them