Topic: Mining on VEGA's with actual gaming drivers! (Cryptonight) No switching! (Read 87 times)

First, a screenshot confirming the work of this method.
https://i.imgur.com/DmQUojO.jpg

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This instruction is in addition to the guide located on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MoneroMining/comments/7pwsme/vega_dual_driver_guide_easily_switch_between/.
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I got it by accident, while writing a .bat file.
The original instruction suggests switching. I do not promise that it will work for you!

I will rewrite main instruction to here. This will save time.

For those that would be interested in mining Cryptonight coins when they are not gaming, I wanted to give a quick and dirty guide on how to switch between a gaming driver of your choice and Blockchain drivers with a few clicks using Windows Device Console Utility (devcon).

1.This guide assumes you have a working and stable Vega Cryptonight mining configuration with the Blockchain driver installed, and no gaming driver installed yet. There are plenty of guides out there already, but I would highly recommend following the one from /u/CircusDad here: http://vega.miningguides.com/

• I only have 1 Vega, so not sure if this works with multiple.
  
• You might be able to get away with installing the Blockchain driver second (if you already have gaming drivers installed) and then follow the mining guide, but that is not what I did so I cannot comment if you will run into issues.

2.Devcon is included when installing WDK, Visual Studio, and the Windows SDK. However, we only need the devcon.exe file. So to get it without all the other bloat we don’t need, follow instructions for your OS version in red text (about a quarter way down the page) from here:

• After that you should now have a file named devcon.exe

3. Get the correct directory for devcon:

• Open a Command Window (in Start Menu type “Command Prompt”).
• Right click and run as administrator. Always run this as an administrator.
• Check the directory listed in the window and write it down. For example my directory (and what most will be) was C:\Windows\System32, as shown here: https://imgur.com/yo6yFPk

4.Move your new devcon.exe file to the given directory (so for me C:\Windows\System32). Configure it to always run as an administrator:

• Right-click the file.
• In the Properties dialog box, click the Compatibility tab.
• Select the “Run this program as an administrator” check box, as shown here: https://imgur.com/a648MWw
• Click OK.

5. Open the Command Window again and type the following: devcon.exe driverfiles “PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_687F”

• Hit Enter.
• Find the line with “driver installed from”. It should say something along the lines of C:\Windows\INF\oem[NUMBER].inf as shown here: https://imgur.com/CUBzAmH
• Write down that number, it will be different for everyone.

6. Normally install any gaming driver you prefer, or Blockchain driver if you are installing that second instead (If you are installing the Blockchain driver, ONLY install the driver itself as noted in the guide I linked to above). WARNING: Switching is not currently stable with adrenaline drivers. You might sometimes get a BSOD when switching (for me, about 1/10 with 17.12.1 dirver). According to /u/Rholk88 switching was stable with the latest 17.11.x driver. Also /u/wily_virus has had no issues yet with 17.12.2 driver.

7. Follow the same instructions as bullet 5 with the gaming driver installed (or Blockchain driver if you installed that second). You should get another INF file with a new number. Write down that number, it will be different for everyone.

8. To switch between drivers:

• Open the Command Window again and type the following: devcon.exe disable “PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_687F”
• Now enter the following: devcon.exe updateni C:\Windows\INF\oem[NUMBER]
• Replace [NUMBER] with the number that is associated with the driver that you want to switch to.
• Hit enter (device will automatically re-enable after switching).

9. Now let’s create a batch file to do bullet 8 automatically with one click:

• Create a txt file on your desktop.
• Name it “Switch to Blockchain Driver” or something similar, and change the .txt at the end to .bat. You might need to enable file extensions before doing this, instructions here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/865219/how-to-show-or-hide-file-name-extensions-in-windows-explorer
• Edit the file and put in the following (thanks to /u/ishtob for some further help on scripting):

Original bat quide:

• Change the directory after "cd" to wherever your devcon.exe file is. This way you can actually put devcon.exe anywhere you would like, but I just went with the default directory for simplicity.
• Replace [Number] with the number associated with your Blockchain driver.
  Save the file.
• Copy the file and rename it to “Switch to Gaming Driver” or something similar.
• Edit the file and replace the [Number] with the number associated with your gaming driver.
• Create shortcuts of both files and move them to your desktop.

Now the most important thing! We create a batch file on the desktop, devcon.exe is left in the System 32 folder, we copy the batch file in my sample to System32 folder.


Now you can display this batch file on the desktop, creating a shortcut and launching it as administrator. Or just create a rule to initiate it when Windows starts!


I hope if this guide helped you, you will help me a little.  

My adresess to donate: