Damn ATI Drivers

[Revrant]

I've always had issues with ATI drivers, the first time it was Halo, and it's been downhill from there, I have a Radeon 7000 and for some, *****ic reason, after every horrible episode after a driver update...I do it all over again, last time I did it Direct3D stopped working, and no matter what I did, it wouldn't turn back on, then I, grasping at the last shivers of hope, installed a Radeon FSC driver, it corrupted the icons, the colors were inverted, I uninstalled it, and reinstalled the ATI drivers, everything worked, but now I can't find that safety-free driver, and for some reason I did it again, so I don't know what to do, I could host DxDiag files, or whatever, any tips, any help, anything at all

 

[crshoveride1]

A new PC with the graphics card installed in it already that you want. Then you don't have to worry about the problems. Under the warranty, its someone elses problem. I know its the not a great fix, but its a possibility.

 

[mailpup]

Just in case, you are uninstalling the old ATI driver, including the control panel, before installing the new one, correct? Your post wasn't clear that you were doing that each time.

 

[Revrant]

cr-I'm poor as hell...thanks for...you know, nothing.

Yes, I uninstalled it, all of it, and I used this...Driver Cleaner thing, Direct3D is still nonfunctional, and ATI just basically gave me a huge, authentic New York middle finger by pointing me to the Knowledge base, which, offers Nothing, naturally.

 

[Psy-Q]

Interesting that this ancient thread replicates my really new problem exactly

I have an ATI Radeon X1950 Pro (AGP) which used to work fine until yesterday. Then a game really suggested using only the absolutely latest graphics cards drivers, so I installed the December 20, 2007 driver (5.5.811) with its Catalyst Control Center.

After doing that and a reboot, the CCC had to "detect some values to optimize your graphics card's performance" or some such thing. I had never seen that dialog pop up before. Ever since it did its magic, Direct3D completely stopped working. Even the Direct3D tests in dxdiag will never complete, they abort immediately with "HRESULT=0x80004005: Unspecified Error", which is very specific information.

I tried uninstalling all ATI software and reinstalling this month's driver (without CCC), then the drivers from November and October, but none of them work. Direct3D is completely dead.

Any ideas what else could be wrong? I tried reinstalling DirectX 9.0c too, but the installer just skips over everything because it detects that things are installed already.

This is on XP Home, just in case.

I've had issues with nVidia's drivers in the past, had been using nVidia cards since the original Riva TNT, but nothing of this magnitude ever happened there.

Update: Apparently, the new drivers break Direct3D for everyone, not just me,but I can't post the link to the AMD forums here because I don't have enough posts yet. The title of the post there is "7.12 driver sucks".

Let's wait and see, and not play any games over Christmas.

 

[mailpup]

Try using System Restore and restore it to a point before you installed the new driver. If System Restore doesn't work or you're not satisfied, you can always undo the restore.

 

[Psy-Q]

Using driver 7.8 helped, as the "sucks" thread in the ATI forum suggested.

Apparently, ATI (silently?) dropped support for AGP cards from all drivers newer than 7.8, but they still allow you to install newer drivers. Downgrading to 7.8 solved all the problems. Whee

 

[mailpup]

Hmmm. I have an older Dell in which I installed an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, AGP and I'm using the 7.11 driver only (no CCC) and it seems to work fine. I'm typing this on it now. Perhaps it's hit or miss.

BTW, what version of the ATI driver were you using that worked fine before this mess?

 

[Blind Dragon]

mailpup -> the problem isn't with display, it is with rendering 3d. Go to start-> run-> type dxdiag -> run the direct3d test -> I can pretty much garuntee you will fail

Just in case anybody googles this -> the instructions below are for 32 bit versions of xp and vista -> if you have a 64 bit OS you need to go to ATI website insert your OS ->pick your card -> go -> go down to bottom and click on previous driver versions and select 7.7

1. Click on Start, then Control Panel, then go to Add/Remove Programs.
2. At the top of the list you should see several ATI entries. Select the entry entitled ATI Software Uninstall Utility, and click Change/Remove.
3. You will be prompted to restart your system once the uninstall is complete.
4. Once restarted, check the Add/Remove Programs list again for any remaining ATI software or other drivers that you have tried.
5. If any ATI software is still listed, click Change/Remove on those entries to uninstall each one individually.
6. Next, please scroll through the list until you find an entry called DAO
7. Select DAO, then Click Change/Remove to uninstall this program.

1.Go to link for you OS - Double-click on the downloaded driver file. Click Run
Use the default directory for extracting the files and press the Install button.

Vista
http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/vista32/previous/common/common-cat77-vista32.html

XP
http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/previous/radeon/radeonxip-cat77-xp.html

2. Click Next on the first install screen.
3. Click Yes to the License agreement.
4. Click the Custom button.
5. Select the driver, catalyst control center and uncheck the box for steam
# The installer will start to load the display driver first.
Next you will see the WDM Capture drivers load (for VIVO or All-In-Wonder).
The Catalyst Control Center setup will start shortly after.
A dialog box will indicate the install progress.

6.Click Finish to restart your computer.

If you couldn't complete the above steps because "Setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware or operating system. Setup will now exit"
You most likely need to update your chipset drivers for your motherboard.

Many people will get an error message at this point. Follow below.

7.Device manager-> add hardware => have disk
8.Select the Driver location yourself which should be C:\ATI\Driver Folder\Driver

 

[Psy-Q]

BTW, what version of the ATI driver were you using that worked fine before this mess?

I don't have the slightest idea, but it must have been something like 7.5 because I already had the card in June and remember installing the drivers fresh from the ATI website instead of from the CD that came with the card.

As Blind Dragon says, 2D display is fine with newer drivers on this card, but there is no 3D at all. Any game that tries to use Direct3D simply crashes, by the way. Some give a decent error message about not being able to initialize Direct3D, which led me to trying dxdiag, which gave me the proper error code, which brought me here

So hurray for error codes!

 

[Blind Dragon]

Exactly OpenGL will often work also, it is only directX that cant send information across the drivers to the graphics hardware

On a side note though I have yet to see this problem with DirectX10

 

[mailpup]

For what it's worth, with the 7.11 driver (only) I ran the Direct3D test and it ran fine. I'm not trying to dispute what anyone is saying about the ATI drivers in general, just saying what my experience was. One the other hand since this machine is one of my older ones, I haven't been running games on it lately. Perhaps I will run into problems if I try to run actual games with this driver.

 

[Blind Dragon]

You are only the 2nd person I have seen the new drivers pass the test out of a few dozen using AGP cards.

Just curious what version DX do you have

 

[mailpup]

I have DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) with Windows XP Home SP2. For additional information, after my last post I tried playing Counter Strike: Source against bots (single player) and it played okay, considering the lowly Radeon 9600 Pro.

 

[Blind Dragon]

I just tried my old system - xpsp2, dx9.0c, 9600pro 128MB

and I fail the d3d test everytime on anything newer than version 7.8

omega drivers work and all drivers prior to 7.8 work fine

 

[mailpup]

I have no good explanation. I never realized there was a problem until reading what was posted in this thread. Anyway, with continued luck I won't have problems but if I do, I will try the 7.8 or earlier drivers.

 

[Psy-Q]

That's interesting. Could that give us hope that AGP support is not really dropped and that some newer driver might fix the issue?

I could live with never upgrading from 7.8 -- sooner or later I'll give up this old gaming PC anyhow -- but it would of course be soothing to know that driver support is still coming. The card's not that old either.

I run the exact same versions of DX and Windows as mailpup, by the way.

 

[mailpup]

Maybe you did something like this already but after uninstalling old ATI drivers under Add/Remove Programs I also search for and delete ATI folders and contents (under C:\ for example) and I use Ccleaner to get rid of any ATI references left over in the registry, then I install a new driver. I know a lot of others like to use Driver Cleaner for this purpose but I haven't tried it yet.

This may not be the solution to the problem but it's something to try.