Odd Ati driver issues

[Yuriman]

I had CF HD3850's installed on (legit!) Vista Business X64, and I regularly got a "atikmdag.sys" BSOD. It's not terribly annoying, since it only happens 4-6 times a week, and it never happens when I'm playing a game - usually when my PC is completely idle, or when I have something non-intensive running on the desktop.

I reinstalled Vista X64, hoping it would resolve my issue. Several days later, my new HD4870 came in, and I installed that.. only to find I still get atikmdag.sys BSODs. I've been having this issue since sometime around Catalyst 7.8, and I have good reason to suspect it isn't related to the cards I'm using (both 3850's BSOD individually and together, as well as my 4870), and if it's driver related, it's something that hasn't changed in the drivers in close to a year. I moved from a P35 to an x38 motherboard about 6 months ago, and swapped CPUs with a friend, and those did not resolve my issue.


Has anyone else experienced this issue, and successfully resolved it? Anyone else still experiencing it that might have some useful information?

 

[loox]

you are not alone. If you search ATI's fora for your problem, you will learn that this error has been occurring beginning as early as Feb. 2008. I, myself have the same problem.

For me, whenever my hard-drives spin-up (or even just one of them) from any type of powered down state the error occurs and my I get a pop-up notification that my video driver failed but before it can BSOD, everything just freezes for a few seconds (10-20 seconds) and then all resumes as normal. I've also noticed it happen when my cursor hovers over the sidebar in some instances.

In any case, this problem is found all over the ATI fora, Visiontek fora, the AVS fora, etc...

The problem is most rampant with 64 bit Vista and/or the Radeon 4xxx series cards, but not thereso limited, further confusing ATI.

You can mitigate the real-world annoyance of this by enabling the catalyst feature that resets the driver rather than result in a BSOD (but I'll be darned if I know how to do this... it should be easy enough to google).

Most puzzling to me, however, is how such a wide-spread bug can go unrecognized by ATI in their driver release notes of Known Issues. Nor can it be found on their official Knowledge Base.

Perhaps it is because the BSOD prevention Catalyst feature keeps this bug in check? Perhaps it is because that the error never shows up when the computer is most active (thereby not affecting gaming)? Probably because of both of these reasons ATI is not being hit too hard with complaints and has pushed this problem to the bottom of the list of things to fix.

However, there are some people, like me, who simply do not like fatal errors clogging up their event log and plummeting our Vista reliability scores from 8-10 to 1-2. Although this doesn't impact gaming, to not fix this is an oversight that blemishes an otherwise respectable computer build. We don't like the sloppy effect this has regardless of whether or not it impacts real-world gaming. And this is coming from an ATI fanboy.

So to answer your questions? No, it is not resolved. Yes, ATI and MS are aware of the issue, and YES almost everyone with 64bit Vista and Radeon 4xxx parts experience this issue. Finally, the problem is not limited to those configurations, thus stumping ATI and MS as to the cause and to be clear, no driver to date has fixed this issue or even acknowledged its existence, or at least not drivers 8.4 to 8.9, with or without the hotfix.

Sorry for such a bleak answer, but as I understand it this is were we are on the matter. Anyone with more recent knowledge is encouraged to post it here!

 

[error8]

From what I know this is much more spread on users with 4850 on both Vista 32 bit or 64 bit. I never experienced it, neither when I was using Vista 32 and not now when I'm using Vista 64, but I have a friend with a 4850 plagued with this problem. He always gets this error no matter the driver version. It's very weird.

 

[Paul Caldwell]

I get random resets on my 3850 on xp 32 bit while playing wow. Fine the rest of the time. I always send the error info when it happens.

 

[hclarkjr]

i am running vista 64 bit with no blue screens but event viewer shows the error for it numerous times every day.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Does this only happen in Vista, or is XP affected too?

 

[Yuriman]

Thanks for the great advice!

Originally posted by: loox
You can mitigate the real-world annoyance of this by enabling the catalyst feature that resets the driver rather than result in a BSOD (but I'll be darned if I know how to do this... it should be easy enough to google).

Can't seem to find anything. Any help?

 

[hclarkjr]

something i just noticed is that i just bought a 6 pin to 8 pin adapter for my power supply so that overdrive is unlocked and the error message went away

 

[taltamir]

atikmdag.sys = ATI driver

 

[SniperWulf]

I have 2 HD4850s in CrossfireX and had the same issue. I recently disabled and unplugged my second monitor and the BSODs seems to have stopped. At least in reference to atikmdag.sys. I'm still having some stability issues, but I think those are related to my OC and hard drive power management issues

 

[Yuriman]

Bump.

Found this, but it doesn't seem to apply directly to my issue. He uses XP, and 2 microsoft updates fixed his problem. I don't think they're available for Vista?

http://www.ngohq.com/graphic-c...l-squeal-death-et.html

 

[Yuriman]

Originally posted by: SniperWulf
I have 2 HD4850s in CrossfireX and had the same issue. I recently disabled and unplugged my second monitor and the BSODs seems to have stopped. At least in reference to atikmdag.sys. I'm still having some stability issues, but I think those are related to my OC and hard drive power management issues

I have a 2nd monitor connected. It would be hard to live without it, but I'll try using just one for a bit and see if it resolves my issue.

 

[Yuriman]

Just had a thought.

Driver doesn't bug out on me when I am running a full-screen game, but does if I run a windowed game, or if I'm watching a movie, or even sitting on the desktop with a few windows open.

I'm thinking the crash *could* be related to Aero - which is disabled when you run a fullscreen 3d app. I'll try turning Aero off before I unplug my 2nd monitor, hopefully that'll solve my issues.