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Hi, I just bought a new PC and for the first time I decided to install an ATI Radeon Graphic Card - 9600 Pro instead of an Nvidea Graphic Card. Unfortunately, I think I made a bad decision, not because of the quality of the graphics, but because of the problems I'm having with it.

First of all, I instaled the Drivers and Catalyst Software that came with the Graphics Card. However I started to have some problems. Everytime I play an online game my PC (with Windows XP) restarts automatically. This also happens sometimes when I'm just online. After turning on again Windows XP tells me it recupoerated from a serious problem - a problem with drivers. I'm almost certain it's a problem with my graphic drivers or with my cable modem drivers.

Anyway I tried to update my ATI CATALYST Drivers to version 3.10. After installing the drivers I had to install the 3.10 Catalyst Control Panel. After restarting the computer the Control Panel told me tha it couldn't detect any installed drivers!!! It said that there might be a problem with the drivers or they don't exist!!! I repeated the process more times and nothing. I even tried to install other versions and nothing. I can only install the Catalyst Drivers and Control Panel that came with the instalation CD of my ATI Radeon 9600 Pro Graphics Card. How is this possible?? What can I do to solve my problem???

This is My PC Configuration:

:: Intel Pentium 4 2800 MHz 478/800 BOX (W/Cooler)
:: Asus P4C800-E Deluxe FSB 800 i875P P4
:: 2x512 DDR 400 MHz Kingston Dual DDR KIT
:: 80 Gb Seagate 7200 SATA 8 Mb CACHE
:: ATI RADEON 9600 PRO 128 DDR TV-Out

Did you uninstall the old Control Panel and Drivers. You HAVE to uninstall the Control Panel and really should uninstall the drivers also. If you didn't, uninstall both of them from the add/remove panel, and then try running Driver Cleaner, to remove any leftover files. Then install the driver and control panel. I don't know if that's the problem, but you can give it a try.

Hi, I uninstalled everything. The Drivers and Control Panel Software... completely.

is it a 'built by ati' card, or is it a third party card like a powercolor or something? second, the catalyst pack comes in an all in one download, maybe try that. IE it's one installation .exe that contains the CP and the drivers.
the recovery msg sounds like the work of the GPU recovery, which you can and at this point probably should turn off in CP if you get it running. do NOT use driver cleaner, i stopped as have others b/c it can cause problems later on. there is a great uninstall/install guide at: http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthre...eadid=33656771
and that forum http://www.rage3d.com/board/forumdis...?s=&forumid=59 is the best place to post this for help, and also read up to see if anyone else is having this or a similar problem.

Hi, thanks for the help. It's a built by ATI Card. I've downloaded and tried to install the complete pack already, but it continues to give me the same problem. What's weird is that the pack that comes with the instalation CD works, but I cant'e install any other Updated pack directly downloaded from ATI.

one last thought, what happens if you install the one from the CD, then install the updated one overtop the current one? you don't really need to uninstall it first, it's just recommended.

do you have DX 9b installed? catalyst 3.10 requires DX9 to be installed in order to work properly.

As far as the computer restarting when you online playing games and other wise sounds like the Blaster or Welchia.Worm viruses. Might want to run a full system scan with your AV and then get rid of all the spyware.

ATi says to uninstall previous Catalyst drivers before installing new Catalyst drivers. it says this in the notes from the drivers from the internet.

if you do not uninstall previous Cats, then their can be a lot of driver issues. it is better to be safe and listen to what ATi says than face possible unforseen problems with driver conflicts.

hey people need help here...i using window me then i change to xp and i have problem install the graphic card...when i want to play game..it say that the graphic card did not support openGL..i try to go to nvidia website to install the lastest version...but it did not update the driver WHY!!! i try many time...

When I bought my Radeon 9800 Pro, I installed the Catalyst drivers from the CD, then installed the Catalyst 3.9 drivers. All is fine and all is working perfectly (Sapphire card; I don't like the Built by ATi cards...expensive)

Turn off Windows XP auto-reboot on error. Start > My Computer (right click) > Properties > Advanced > Startup & Recovery > "Automatically Restart"

That will fix the auto-reboots and instead will give you a nice error

Get the video drivers from the Toshiba site evo - the Go series of drivers are best attained from your laptop manufacturer.

that's all well and good, except when someone CAN'T do i that way. then you try other ways, such as installing overtop the old one, as ATI even says it's okay. Try hanging out on the rage3d boards and you'll see this stated from people that work on the catalyst drivers themselves.

Krugger, I also do go to the rage3d forums. about everyone there says to uninstall the cat drivers first before installing newer versions. using driver cleaner after uninstalling the cat drivers is also another suggestion. this method is to eliminate problems with installation/uninstallation of ati drivers and software. knowing that the Cats installation is not the problem, a person can then troubleshoot other possible problems with hardware, OS, etc.

under this thread, it discusses how to do a fullproof uninstall of catalayst drivers in case something went wrong. urbanomad had problems with his control panel not detecting his drivers. something probably did go wrong with his drivers. urbanomad should also read some more important threads from rage3d.

the method of installing over previous drivers is okay if you are not having problems. if it works for you, that is good. but sometimes installing over previous driver versions does not go as smoothly as it should on some people's setups (that is why i suggest to do what olefarte stated previously). that is when a person has to go through uninstallation methods in the previous rage3d thread.

furthermore, could you elaborate on what you mean by "when someone CAN'T do i that way"? to me, it sounds like a problem with the Cat installation or something.

With Radeon you need to uninstall before upgrading.
The newest Catalyst from ATI is 4.1. Ati also has a uninstall program that cleans up all the left behind junk that can cause a new install to fail.
Go to ATI web site click on driver software enter your OS/graphic driver/radeon download the Catalyst to desktop.
Now go to bottom of the Catalyst page listed there or these CATALYST Crew - Driver feedback program
CATALYST - ATI Maintenance Utilities
Windows XP Previous Driver Versions
Click on Catalyst-ATI Maintenance Utilities and download the uninstall progarm listed there.
Also read the installation tips at top of Catalyst download page
and print it out so can read it as going thru uninstall and install.
After done safe the Catalyst and uninstall program in a folder in My Document for later use.

Somehow you are facing the same kind of problem as i did. (Replacing my Win98se OS to WinXP OS and encountered problem of getting the right display driver installed). I also tried numerous time trying to install my display driver (ATI Mobility Radeon for my EVO N160) but to no avail, it only works as long as i do not restart my system, otherwise, it would prompt me to restore to my previous healthy logon. All in all, it seems that the install driver is correct but the OS rejected it. Somehow, i got this feeling that it has something to do with the OS (Win XP SP1), you might try update your Win XP SP1 to SP1a from microsoft support website. Hope this help.

P/S: If anyone out there have solution to my problem, pls. help.

Many thanks!

My problem arises when trying to remove the driver/control panel and reinstall it. The uninstall process works fine and I then reboot my PC, my problem comes with Windows XP's nice little feature of auto-detecting hardware.

I was wondering if anyone knew how I can cancel the hardware wizard installation when I only get that little icon in my taskbar and an info box popping up saying:

"New hardware found"
"VGA Adapter"
"Radeon 9800xt"

Then it proceedsd to install it and I'm right back at square one. Is there any way that I can cancel the wizard before it self-installs the Catalyst driver, or do I have to go through all the steps of removing the driver from all over hell's half acre in order to have windows install it as a simple VGA?

Thanks in advance,

Permafried-

Whats the problem with letting XP install a catalyst? If you're installing the newest version, go ahead and do it, it wont hurt anything.

Vassil,

My problem with this is that ATI recommends you uninstall the previous drivers prior to installing the new ones. If I do this, I have to reboot, come back into Windows and once again it re-installs the previous verion of the drivers I had in the first place.

This might not seem like a huge issue but from time to time I've noticed that between different versions my desktop begins to run almost as if it were a slideshow, and I have to repeat the process in order to alleviate the issue. It seems that Catalyst drivers don't like being installed over top of already existing, currently in use drivers.

Also, after the drivers are installed, upon the next reboot the drivers self-test to ensure there are no problems, and if I don't reboot after Windows installs the drivers itself then I come back to Windows running the same version once again. Sorry if this seems confusing, it's kinda hard to communicate exactly why this can cause a problem, but it can in the long run and as of yet I have found no way of stopping the hardware wizard from doing it's thing on every bootup.

Thanks,

Permafried-

Permafried, I feel your pain when it comes to the auto-detection, it's a mixed blessing... Like you, I had the EXACT same problems.. I followed the information contain at this link:

http://www.tweaktown.com/document.ph...Id=569&dPage=2

This helped me to remove all the leftover parts of the ATI drivers, including the Microsoft ATI driver.

Here is a summary of the events on that happened with my computer:

1. I cleand the %systemroot%\system32\drivers of all ATI*.*
2. I cleand the %systemroot%\system of anything with ATI*.*
3. I went in to device manager and removed the ATI driver (which continued to be there despite my best efforts).
4. The computer then asked if I wanted to reboot, which I did.

Here is where the story gets murky for some reason.

The computer rebooted and Windows XP started to detect the video card again.. after 30 seconds or so, my monitor went in to powersave - I have no clue what my computer was doing.

I then hit the reset / powered off and back on and Windows came up, but this time (why I don't know) it started to detect the ATI card, but it said the drivers were not signed and asked if I wanted to continue installation - at this point I said NO (really I said HELL NO!) and it put me back at the desktop. I then ran the latest ATI drivers and now everything seems to be fine.

Hopefully this helps -

Lance