Got a Radeon and a system drive that never stops writing, even when the PC is doing nothing? The driver may be the culprit. On some systems atieclxx.exe, part of AMD's Adrenalin package, writes to the boot SSD nonstop at 0.3 to 1.5 MB/s, and one Reddit user logged a steady 5 MB/s. AMD staff have acknowledged the bug and say the fix is coming in Adrenalin 26.11.1, due this month. Here is how to check your own PC in a minute and what to do until then.
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What gets written, and how much
atieclxx.exe is the AMD External Events Client Module. It belongs to the AMD External Events Utility service, the bit that notices when you plug in a monitor and listens for Adrenalin hotkeys. On affected machines it gets stuck in a loop and keeps writing to C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local\AMD with nothing else running.
The rates look harmless until you multiply them. Tomasz Gawroński posted a log showing 19.5 GB written in 12 hours, roughly 0.65 MB/s. Left running all day, that is 56 GB, and at 5 MB/s it is 432 GB. Those are our extrapolations, not wear measurements. VideoCardz points out that writes counted by Windows are not necessarily writes to the NAND itself, and nobody has measured the real hit to SSD lifespan yet.
This is not new, either. The thread on AMD's own forum dates back to July and names drivers 26.6.4 and 26.9.1; the November reports on Reddit are about 26.10.1 and 26.10.2. The 26.10.2 release notes don't list the problem as fixed or as a known issue.
Check your PC in one minute
- Close games, the browser and sync clients. Give it a couple of minutes; you want the PC idle.
- Win + R, type resmon. On the Disk tab, sort processes by Write (B/sec).
- atieclxx.exe sits at the top and stays there? You have the bug. If it isn't there, relax: plenty of people on 26.10.2 never see it.
- To see how much has piled up, note Total Host Writes in CrystalDiskInfo and check again after 24 hours.
What AMD says, and what to do before 26.11.1
AMD_Matt replied first, on AMD's forum on October 21, saying the company was looking into it and aimed to fix it in a future driver. Later AMD_Vik told Reddit users the service clashes with Microsoft's PCIe filter driver, that a fix had been submitted, and that Adrenalin 26.11.1 should carry it. There is no release date, and as of today the driver isn't on amd.com.
Two workarounds exist, and both cost you something. One: open services.msc, find AMD External Events Utility, stop it and set Startup type to Manual or Disabled. The writes stop, but Adrenalin hotkeys die with them and reports on FreeSync are mixed. Two, reportedly suggested by AMD_Vik himself: turn off Resizable BAR in the BIOS. That doesn't help everyone and costs frames in games that like ReBAR.
My take: on a decent 1 TB TLC drive, just wait for 26.11.1, two more weeks won't hurt it. On a small QLC boot drive where resmon shows megabytes per second, I'd switch the service off today. Remember to set it back to Automatic once the new driver is in, or your hotkeys will stay broken and you'll spend an evening wondering why.
Sources
AMD Community: atieclxx causes excessive disk read/write (thread since July 2026, drivers 26.6.4 and 26.9.1, folder path).
VideoCardz (November 9, 2026; AMD_Matt and AMD_Vik statements, write rates, Tomasz Gawroński's log, workarounds).
TechPowerUp (November 9, 2026).
AMD: Adrenalin 26.10.2 release notes.
The GB-per-day figures are our math, assuming the process never stops. Radeon renders from AMD's product pages.
