I finally understand the ATI driver "troubles".

[RSMemphis]

For a while, my 8500 did not give me quite the result I had hoped for. I wondered why.

Well, I did a driver upgrade once, and although I uninstalled the ATI drivers before, I did not remove every single trace of them manually.
After my latest reformat, newest CATs, DirectX 9, a lot of problems went away that I never attributed to faulty driver stuff.

I wish they could make that easier for the user. I know a lot about computers, but I still shy back from such an endeavour.

 

[TrollMan]

Like they need a Catalyst Crapper to compare with Detonator Destroyer

Or maybe there is one already?

 

[Killrose]

Unfortunately, re-formatting is always the recommended method. all the other methods are just work arounds to save you some of the pain of going thru it. Glad to hear it has improved things for you.

 

[Glitchny]

yeah i agree there should be a catlyst killer tool or something that makes it easier to upgrade

 

[RSMemphis]

Well, the new Catalyst readme specifies everything. Kill this file, remove this registry entry.
However, at this point, reformating is easier...

 

[gcogger]

The fact that I have to jump through hoops just to change drivers, plus many other problems, puts me off ever buying an ATI card again (now running a 9700 Pro). My old GeForce card never gave me any of these problems.

 

[BFG10K]

You shouldn't need to reinstall Windows if you're doing a simple driver upgrade. More likely the Windows reinstall has removed the crap that was installed on your system before.

 

[Blooz1]

Yesterday I went through my first experience with ATI drivers. I had just received a Sapphire Radeon 8500LE from NewEgg, and had a problem with the initial install. It was all downhill from there!

I found that the card would not boot into Windows, and tried to reinstall again, to no avail. I put the original card back into the system, and hit some Forums looking for issues. I couldn't believe that many people advised a complete Windows reinstallation just to replace a graphics card! And when I saw the "hoops" recommended at some sites on driver removal, I was astounded! I did find an amazing amount of stuff "left behind" by the driver after it was supposed to be "deleted"....

It turned out that my card was DOA out of the box. I have a new one coming on RMA, and I really hope that the new install will go smoother than my first try!

 

[rbV5]

Maybe try Driver Cleaner 1.0. Discussed in this thread.

 

[MrCraphead]

I went from a GF4 Ti4200 128MB w/ the 41.09 drivers to a Radeon 9700 Pro, Catalyst 3.0 drivers without a problem. All I did was uninstall the nvidia stuff from the add/remove programs, and viola. Worked fine......*shrug*

 

[Blooz1]

rbV, I did some research on that Driver Cleaner program this morning and downloaded it. It looks promising as a solution to this problem. Have you used it yourself?

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: MrCraphead
I went from a GF4 Ti4200 128MB w/ the 41.09 drivers to a Radeon 9700 Pro, Catalyst 3.0 drivers without a problem. All I did was uninstall the nvidia stuff from the add/remove programs, and viola. Worked fine......*shrug*

Heh yah, that's a testament to nVidia's excellent driver delivery and removal UDA. I'd like to see you try to do that in reverse

Chiz

 

[Excelsior]

I used teh Driver Cleaner...with good results.

 

[CYoung]

Yes, I use Driver Cleaner, along with this:
<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">
This is a One Time process. After doing it, you can cancel out of windows wizard each time....

edit - to add one time process to get to the place of cancelling out of windows auto detect new hardware wizard:

ATI:
1. Unplug nic card or modem from net (physically unplug)
2. Remove ATI driver from add/remove programs then remove CP from add/remove programs
3. Reboot into safe mode (F8 during boot up)
4. On reboot into safe mode winXP SP1 will auto detect and install drivers. Just let it do its thing. If you can cancel out of the auto install hardware wizard then skip the rest and run Driver Cleaner now! If you can NOT cancel out of auto detect wizard then...
5. Navigate to device mgr->display adapter->uninstall and/or remove ATI display adapter but do not reboot
6. Open windows explorer and delete c:\ATI and c:\program files\ATI
7. start->run->search c:\windows for ati*.* and delete all that are NOT your IE bookmarks or favorites. Also, <B>be sure to search hidden files and subfolders</B>
8. Empty recycle bin and reboot
9. if you can <B>cancel out</B> of auto detect wizard GREAT! run this cleaner and reboot. If you still can not cancel out of wizard, repeat steps 3-8


and after this, you will be able to cancel out of windowsXP auto detect wizard and for all future use, it will be:
1. remove from add/remove programs and reboot
2. <B>cancel out of auto detect wizard</B>
3. run driver cleaner and reboot
4. install new drivers.<BR style="mso-special-character: line-break"><BR style="mso-special-character: line-break">This procedure works great, and saves a lot of time in the future. I used it to remove the CAT3.0's; then installed the Omega 6.2.55s. The other day I put in the Cat 3.1's. The 1X procedure makes life so much easier for future driver changes.

I also think it is ludicrous to have to reinstall Windows every time you want to change a driver!</SPAN>

 

[Tab]

I have a Radeon 8500, I dunno if its the drivers or my card. But I now have artifacts with xp, oh well. ATI and nVidia could still improve on their drivers.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: MrCraphead
I went from a GF4 Ti4200 128MB w/ the 41.09 drivers to a Radeon 9700 Pro, Catalyst 3.0 drivers without a problem. All I did was uninstall the nvidia stuff from the add/remove programs, and viola. Worked fine......*shrug*

Yeah, I did something similar - I went from a GF3 to a Radeon 8500 to a GF4 without much trouble. No windows reinstalls, just uninstalling drivers. I probably reformatted once in there, but I don't remember - I basically make it a point to reinstall windows sometime after I get a new vid card, but that's usually every 2-3 months, not right after I get the card. I don't remember ever having any problems going from one card to another (even from ATI to nVidia or vice-versa).

 

[rbV5]

Have you used it yourself?

No, I'm on a fresh install with the lastest Cat 3.1...but it does look promising.

 

[Vortex22]

I don't know... I've gone through about 10 sets of ATI drivers over 2 different Radeon cards with absolutely no deleting, I just installed the new ones right over and have never had any problems.

Lucky I guess

 

[Duvie]

I run driver cleaner but it does not get rid of everything...I few final touches of cleanup and it is ready to install new drivers...Not necessarily recommended when you need to update wdm drivers, and mmc also...Better just reformatting there....

I keep all files and stuff on my other drive so I don't nned to back up things on the c: drive and thus reformats are painless...I can always reinstall the few apps I run. I don't like to keep apps on computer unless I run them regularly...