atikmdag problem

Hello!

Does anybody have any idea as to why I am getting the atikmdag failure notices in Vista?

It seems to appear when running FSX. No problem for about 4 days (since I got this machine up and running) but it is happening now. Screen freezes, then blacks out then comes back with the little error window at the bottom right stating that atikmdag stopped responding and that Windows has recovered.

Asus P5K-E WiFi mobo
Intel E6600 (not overclocked)
Sapphire Radeon 2900XT
2GB Corsair DDR2-800
Windows Vista Home Premium
FSX Deluxe

Cheers!

Yes, I am...but I just uninstalled them and trying 7.4 and then 7.5 to see what crops up.

Latest update:

Uninstalled 7.6: No artifacts or screen corruption. (Of course, no 3D capabilities either)
Re-installed 7.6: Artifacts and corruption are back with a vengeance.

I've been an ATI guy for a long, long time but it seems that AMD has really screwed the pooch on this one. I'm seriously thinking of removing Vista and using XP until ATI straightens out their act and gets some decent Vista drivers to the market although I'm really not too sure how XP would behave like under 7.6 or even 7.4 for that matter. Any suggestions?

Looks like the bean counters put too much pressure on the tech dept. and they pushed the 2900XT out the window too darn fast. The hardware seems ok but the drivers look like they could do with some serious re-writing.

Just my 2-cents worth.

Well I had a variety of atikmdag errors. I tried all the suggested solutions, from arcane settings changes (like sys config utility/boot tab/advanced/etc . . .), to a variety of driver changes (catalyst, windows default, etc.), to stripping down the PC to a hard drive and a DVD, reloading Vista, and adding hardware back one component at a time.

One reference I did find which struck me as curious was someone that wrote that when they had taken their RAM down to one 1GB chip things ran fine. That stayed in the back of mind.

As I added back cards, drives and peripherals everything was working perfectly. Vista is/was insanely stable. Felt stable, no issues, nothing.

In stripped down mode I had been running one stick of memory. I didn't figure it was a RAM issue because I had run detailed tests on the RAM and everything checked out. In any case, the issue must be with one of the stick of RAM I had, because as soon as it was added back I had the error messages, the BSODs and the freezes.

In any case, hopefully I will save you a lot of time: Physically check your RAM through trial and error. It worked for me.

I just turned up the fan speed on my HD4850... I haven't had a problem in a month. Watch your temps.

Did the memtest, no errors. I have a one-year old quad-core system. Quality components, very simple, very stable, good power supply, no excess heat (GPU 37 degrees C), no over-clocking, running Vista 32-bit. The motherboard is an Asus P5K-V. I do not play games. I recently upgraded to a dual-monitor system, which required more than the integrated graphics, so I got the Radeon Sapphire HD4670, another simple mid-level solution that would provide two DVI outputs at any normal resolution. (Somewhat reluctantly, remembering other ATI cards in systems and years past.) I installed the latest stable driver (8.12). Now I am experiencing _daily_ crashes with the atikmdag display driver message. This is highly frustrating. ATI support says to check hardware issues, and attempts to put the blame on any and everything else in the system. For many enthusiasts who tinker with their systems this will result in them thinking "Hmm, I must have done something wrong here." I don't buy it. In my system the only change was the ATI card, so it is the problem. Looks like the tradition of shoddy engineering, incompetent programming and poor customer service is alive and well at ATI/AMD today.

Don't cross post multiple times in old threads, stick to current ones, or create a new one for a specific issue.

A little research into this outside of simply cut/pasting and you would know you're complaining about a symptom and not the cause.