Major Probs Installing ATI drivers

[Stinkfinger]

I have read quite a few threads and posts and still have trouble installing new catalyst, even older drivers.
I used Driver cleaner and got rid of old nvidia drivers. Got the new 9800 pro last week, everything worked fine. Tried to install new catalyst tonight, NO DICE. I uninstalled the old crap and tried installing new and when puter restarts i would get warning that the ati control panel could not find such and such files plus a window saying that graphic information could not be found. Looked in device manager and had the yellow thingy next to my cards name. tried adding new hardware and said that the device could not start( Error code 10)
All the files are in the add remove programs list and in thier perspective folders but nuttin happens. Anyhoo, did system restore and everything is fine. ANY IDEAS PLEASE

Confuscious say: He who go to bed with ithcy ass, wake up with stinkyfinger

 

[agcheavin]

Make sure that when you do delete all of your old files that you use a driver cleaning program (ati has one on hteir web site that works well) and also delete the ATI directory in C drive.

During the installation process ensure that your anti virus is disabled, but another sure fire way to have problems with the installation is to run OLD chipset drivers, always update these first ! Next make sure SP1 is installed for XP, it does mention on the ATI site that it is a requirement but you would be surprised as to how many people do not update there operating system.

Gary

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<font color=red>AMD 2700 XP<font color=red>
<font color=red>Gecube 9800 pro Extreme<font color=red>
<font color=blue>ASUS A7N8X deluxe<font color=blue>
<font color=blue>1024 meg Dual Channel DDR 3200<font color=blue>
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[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Best thread/article/instructions you could get.

<A HREF="http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33656771" target="_new">http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33656771</A>

BTW, I install and uninstall Catalyst drivers likely more than anyone else here, and I rarely have a problem (except for DNA drivers and 2 times where I tried to install unsupported drivers).

My Advice when upgrading from Catalyst to Catalyst. Have the new drivers already downloaded and in an easy to access spot before you start. Now, Uninstall only the Control Panel and Display Driver through ADD/REMOVE in control panel. Then reboot, and when windows brings up the found new hardware window cancel it (which in your case if it is not happening I would think there's other issues with your setup). If you get the could not find 'ATIMENUXXX whatever' warning at the beginning it is related to the silly pop-up menu at the beginning which if you disable that message goes away. I used ot never install that menu, but it always gave me that silly warning which goes away after cancelling the quick tips stuff at the beginning.

Follow the direction above, and if you are still having problems, I would look for IRQ conflicts and such, as there is something else at work. BTW, which make of R9800 do you have? Have you tried using the MFR's drivers?


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[Stinkfinger]

Thanks alot for the help and may i say: HOLYT CRAP!!! why does things have to be so complicated? So many things that could be wrong.
I Have a dell so i went to dells site and did the driver update for the chipset and it said that no device could be found on my system. So i went somewhere else looking and i have to do a little more reading on that.
Anyhoo, i had Antivirus off and did the driver cleaner but nothing.
I really think my mobo or whatever has issues cause everytime i boot my rig, my mouse doesnt work, i have to unplug then plug back in for it to work.
Needless to say i need to work on my mobo probs.


Confuscious say: He who go to bed with ithcy ass, wake up with stinkyfinger

 

[Stinkfinger]

Well, it looks like i have alot of work ahead of me after reading that forum.

When i first installed the card( ASUS Ati 9800 pro, 256) I used the drivers off of the disc and it worked like a charm, used the driver cleaner for nvidia first of course.
highest score on 3dmark 03 was 5336 on quality. Anyhoo, i wanted to try the new cat and thats when i had the problems i mentioned. Did system restore and works fine again. Im gonna have to do alot of messing around and i will keep you posted as to my progress.
One question though. If i remove entries from the registry, will i still be able to perform a system restore if it doesnt work. If you dont hear from me, i screwed up my computer, lol
Thanks again for the help, much appreciated.

Confuscious say: He who go to bed with ithcy ass, wake up with stinkyfinger

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Funny thing is if everything else works fine it's really easy. You don't even need to follow those directions, you can usually load the new ones right overtop of the old, especially with the new single package setup.

I have often just loaded right overtop without issue.

The only reason I make the effort to remove the old drivers is because I want to make absolutely sure that the results I'm seeing for the comparison thread is because of the drivers I'm looking at only, and not something left over from the old drivers.

I'm not sure, I think system restore does save registry setting (i've only used it once after a bad second OS install, and everything went back to old drivers, and pre-USB CDRW config with all the old entries, so I'm not sure, but I think so.

The thing about Dell is that alot of it is proprietary and doesn't like to play well with others.

In any case, Good Luck!


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[Stinkfinger]

Well i tried it again last nighta bunch of different ways and still doesnt work. I still get the messages: The ati control panel could not start cause the ati driver is not installed or doesnt work and that the graphic card information could not be found..
I did not try the way in that link that was provided yet cause thats a little deep for me. So i just did another syste, restore and everything is fine.
Maybe there is other issues at hand cause my mouse doesnt work either when i restart the computer. I have to unplug then plug back in.
I will wait till i get my new computer built. This Dell is totally messed up, Probably by my hand, lol, Being a puter illiterate and all.
Thanks again for all the help. Your efforts are appreciated.

Confuscious say: He who go to bed with ithcy ass, wake up with stinkyfinger

 

[pauldh]

Grape, do you think it could be caused from the fact he had the Asus drivers installed from the start? What about an Asus utility that may have also been installed?

I have no expereince with Asus based ATI cards, but I know I had some terrible issues with MSI based NV cards. I had built two systems with MSI GF2 Ti cards that had the drivers off the original MSI disk installed. Also the MSI driver and bios update utility (i forget the name now) was installed, as well as an MSI OC'in utility that had never been used, but was installed.

Well, even after uninstalling all of the above from control panel, no newer generic NVidia NV drivers could be installed succesfully. But MSI drivers worked just fine.

I had an extra of the same card and threw it in a new build, skipped the MSI disc and loaded the drivers from NV's site. All went well. I tried a few other drivers, all went well. So I knew it was something from the MSI install disc hanging around. Took a long time to search the registry, maybe detenator destroyer could have done it for me, but i finally got the other two system to use regular NV drivers. What a hassle though.

Could it be the same for him? Or is it better with ATI drivers than NV? Does the Asus install disc install any other utilities that could be hanging around causing conflict?



ABIT IS7, P4 2.6C, 512MB Corsair TwinX PC3200LL, Radeon 9800 Pro, Santa Cruz, TruePower 430watt

 

[Zoron]

Where are you download the Cats from? Are you downloading reference drivers or ATi drivers? If you are downloading from ATi's website, chances are you're downloading ATi drivers unless you specifically searched for reference drivers.

The problem with that is the ATi drivers check the BIOS on the vid card. If it isn't a 'Built by ATi' card, the drivers will NOT work. Your card is based on a Radeon chip, however ATi did not manufacture it... therefore the ATi drivers won't work with it. You have to download the reference drivers to work with your Asus card.

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

I don't think it's the ASUS drivers, or really so much the ATI drivers. I think it's a system issue, especially due to the mouse issue. I'm also not a fan of DELLs, we havesome at work and they are just a hassle, the installers HATE the laptops compared to the Thinkpads because the T-Pads were more rugged.

I'd stick with the ASUS drivers for the most parts simply because there is the Theatre Rage chips and vivo functionality in their cards which is different than your basic ATI card and not as complex as the AIW cards. When in doubt the company's own reference drivers leaves nothing to question, and thereby you can complain to ASUS saying, look I used your recommended drivers, and still nothing.

Really, people have to figure out what works best for them and then go from there.

The bad thing is dell has the habit of putting old/low end parts in and not tell consumers that they don't get this support or that support.

Hey the early 8X mobos had alot of trouble with the R9700 and GF4ti cards running in 8X mode, mine had a sticker specifically saying it was tested for 8X compatibility with the GF4ti and R9700Pro. So who knows could be a minor thing like that. But it's hard to troubleshoot at this distance.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[dhlucke]

I Have a dell

You got Delled. What a hoser.

<font color=red>___________</font color=red>
<b><A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/community/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=39826#39826" target="_new">Sexual Poll!</A></b>

 

[Kronos]

Sounds like your video system is in vga/sav mode. Type in vga/sav in your browser search engine and you will have a series of options that explain how to overcome that situation.

I want to die like my Grandfather...in my sleep...not screaming in terror like his passengers.

 

[Stinkfinger]

Ok, i was using the driver straight from ati, so after seeing that i uninstalled my asus driver through control panel then went and removed the device in device manager.
Got a driver from rage3d and it installed like a champ. Got 5310 in 3dmark03 on high quality.

I do remember something about it saying vga something or other in place of the card description when i was having those problems. I did the search for the vga/save and to be honest, there was so much crap to read i got dizzy.

It seems to be working just fine now eccept the asus smartdoc does not have all the bells and whistles like it did before. Cant manually set anything but the clock speeds and it doesnt have the readouts for temp and whatnot. I will deal with it though cause i am working on putting a new computer together so i will be able to get into it a little deeper then.
But i will say, if i knew 2 years ago what little more i know now, Dude would not have gotten a dell.
Oh, i do remember now that when i first installed the card, the bios only recognized 128 megs, i changed to 256. and the agp is only 4x which im sure you allready know.
Again i know there is alot of other issues at hand and i'll just deal with them for now. 103 problems found in my registry by reg mechanic(NUFF SAID) But no driver issues.

THANKS a million once again for everyones help. As always you THG doodz ROCK. Cant express my gratitude enough. If i could i would buy you all a new Dell, LMFAO, j/k

Confuscious say: He who go to bed with ithcy ass, wake up with stinkyfinger

 

[Zoron]

You'll have to download drivers from Asus if you want all the bells and whistles. I don't know what Cat. version they have now, since my card is built by ATi and I never check the Asus site for drivers.

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

 

[Stinkfinger]

To hell with it, i'll just wait to put my new rig together. I tried the crap from asus and i have other issues thats screwing me up. Current Smart Doc wont uninstall and something about ISScript.msi when trying to install new. Tried fixing it but nothing, keep getting all different kinds of errors.
Thanks For the help anyway, it IS much appreciated.

Confuscious say: He who go to bed with ithcy ass, wake up with stinkyfinger

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

I assume you did like agcheavin said and had SP1, so it does sound like it's an issue with a custom configuration of Dell's hardware. They get so much weird, cheezy, cheap custom parts that it doesn't surprise me that it doesn't take upgrades well.

Hopefully the new build runs smooth as silk for ya'.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[Stinkfinger]

Thanks Apeman, i hope it goes smoothe too. I did do like he said, I usually do windows update often anyway. Does the windows update do the chipset drivers too or is that a seperate entity?
My 3rd rig im building and this one is for myself, so the first 2 were trial rigs. This one im gonna take my time with. Gonna go with AMD 64 3200+ i think. Looking at newegg right now as we speek. So expect to see alot of me for help, lol
No More Dells for me

Confuscious say: He who go to bed with ithcy ass, wake up with stinkyfinger<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Stinkfinger on 03/17/04 09:23 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Zoron]

Chipset drivers are something you have to do manually. I've never seen a chipset driver update on Windows Update.

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

 

[Stinkfinger]

Ive tried going to DELLS website and downloading a chipset driver but the site said that no device was found. I'll have to try searching the net i guess. Thanks

Confuscious say: He who go to bed with ithcy ass, wake up with stinkyfinger

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yeah chipset drivers and MOBO bios are thing you would <i>USUALLY</i> get from the Chipset maker (VIA, SIS, etc), but occasionally the latest are available from the MOBO maker's site (ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, ECS, etc), MOBO BIOS is only from the MOBO maker.

With a DELL though, they are very strict about what you can upgrade/fix/tweak yourself. Oftne the BIOS settings are limited. And the only resource would be dell's support page. Often the support for a specific dell model will expire much sooner than any chipset maker would abandon their updates. However even if you know it's and Intel or nV or VIA Chipset, you likely wouldn't be able to go to their site and get the update because it's a special build ONLY for DELL and they won't provide special support as per DELL's request.

That's one of the best reasons to avoid the pre-fab stuff. Some are OK, but too many like DELL, GateWay, HP, don't allow you to do much of any self-maintenance.

I'd e-mail DELL and point out the probem you are having updating the chipset (don't mention any other problems or they will blame everything including the Fung-Shuei (sp?) of your house as to why it's not working). Just e-mail them explaining the error you get and what they recommend, or if they can send you the proper file.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[Stinkfinger]

That makes a helluva alot of sense! Why should they make everything upgradable when they can just say: HEY! BUY another Dell from us! Try asking them if you can upgrade the processor: They wont tell you, again, they suggest buying a new computer.
Im pretty sure its an Intel chipset but cant remember how to check, i did once and it had a bunch of different numbers. Did a search for that kind of chipset and found a crap load of stuff but havent had time to fook with it.
I do know that the motherboard is a dell mobo. and most of the drivers i was able to check through device manager had the same date- 7/1/2001
Oh crap, i just remembered that i only have the windows xp home upgrade. should that make a difference? [-peep-], doesnt matter. Like i said, I will take extra care with my new rig. I will just reformat this one and keep as spare and use as guinne pig. Thanks again for the Help, You guys friggin ROCK!!!!!


Confuscious say: He who go to bed with ithcy ass, wake up with stinkyfinger