Problems when installing new ATI drivers

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

Thank you Dave, unfortunately, I can't try your suggestion for only one reason: I do not have with me the OEM software disk as I am 4000 km away from home where all my disks are... I have done all what you suggest except that major part and I can't resolve that issue!

 

I understand. You might wish to see if the company has the package available for download. I had this problem twice in four years, and tried EVERYTHING under the sun. The first time i resolved it by reformatting my HD and reinstalling Windows, the second time I tried the OEM disk as I didn't want to go through another Windows and FSX/FSX Addon install (Mine takes days to complete).

 

Anyway, I've been there and feel your pain!

 

Dave

[ronski 1]

Hi jean claude,

 

you said the card is not listed in FS9, what about in windows?

 

Did you check in Windows device manager?, expand displays and see if the card is listed. ( or more than one, select 'show all devices' )

 

Start button , click Control Panel, click System and Maintenance, and then click Device Manager.

Is the card listed?, or does it have yellow or red flag??

 

Open DXdiag again and select 'display', check that the video card is correct and not something like 'standard VGA card'

 

try this fix from microsoft.

http://support.micro..._problems/en-us

 

also have a look at this help;

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/191660

 

Try and set up a new user account in control panel, reboot and log in with the new account and see if the card is detected, and direct 3D is enabled.

 

If all this still does not work, then you could try to enable it manually. XP allowed you to enable direct 3D in dxdiag, but not win 7.

NOTE; if your not sure about changing registry settings, please back up the registry before doing this.

 

From the start, search menu, type regedit, right click on regedit.exe and select 'run as admin'.

run "regedit" and open this key (click on the + or >signs):

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Direct3D\Drivers

 

Double click (on the right hand side) the text "SoftwareOnly" and change the value from "1" to "0"

 

Thats it! Close the regedit program again.

 

Be warned: Don't touch anything else in regedit, unless you know, what you are doing.

 

 

just some ideas,

 

Ron.

[76496 17]

Are you trying this driver update with an overclock?

[juvat 0]

First read these articles regarding issues on IE6,7,8 as it pertains to Sp3 installation. You will need the full versions of IE7 and IE8.Remember to backup your Internet Explorer favorites... File, Import and Exports, Export to a file....

 

http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/09/dont-install-ie7-before-windows-xp-sp3/

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950719

 

*****************************

Jean-Claude,

I've had the problem somewhat as you describe. With my WinXpPro Sp3, what I have had to do is 1st make sure you download and save the full version of Sp3. Then uninstall Sp3 from your add-remove programs. You will be asked to restart. Re-install Sp3. You will need to restart. Re-installing Sp3 replaces your video driver with its own basic amd graphics card driver. It sounds drastic, but is better than doing a full OS repair install. Then you should have a headache free install of amd gpu drivers; at least it has worked for me following a foiled amd driver upgrade because (I suspect) amd damages .net framework on WinXp during its driver installation somehow.

 

good luck, and hope this was helpful,

jimb

[ARCO 245]

No driver OC Jamie.

Thank you Dave, Jim and Ron, I am travelling today but will get back to my task tomorrow and will surely follow your recommendations. I shall report regardless of the findings.

 

Best regards to all.

[ronski 1]

Hi Jean-claude,

 

just noticed as Jimb above has said, you are trying this in XP not win 7, as I had thought. The microsoft fix link I gave was for Win7 so may not work.

 

Ron.

[Humpty 752]

You should have never run driver cleaner.

[SeanBH 9]

Wow...I, like a few here, have never had an AMD update go bad- and I update my drivers every month. I agree about using driver cleaners- sometimes they have a tendency to go hogwild with the process (I have a current issue with CCleaner clearing my Saitek profile ever so often- but not all the time- no rhyme or reason to it). The only way I've ever updated my CCC package is by opening CCC and using the links to the AMD site. Sorry to hear you're having so many problems with this!

[ARCO 245]

Thank you once again to all those who kindly offered their help to resolve my problem. I tried each and every solutions (and that's quite a lot!) but unfortunately to no avail.

 

My present status is that my ATI drivers are installed and recognised by Windows XP SP3, CCC is fully functional, my projector and monitor are on the correct settings, DXdiag also recognise all items correctly but gives me the message that 3D acceleration is not available and it cannot be activated on the DXdiag 3D page as the three buttons are all grey, in the remarks box, it tells me that "3D acceleration is not available. Verify that your pilot version is final".

 

Going through my Documents and Settings folder, I incidentally realised that I had 6 identical ATI folders (ATI, ATI(1), ATI(2) etc) and 6 identical Administrators folders, I assume these were the results of my numerous aborted ATI drivers and CCC install even though I was cautious to clean up - as recommended by ATI by the way - after each aborted install... and if these could be part of the problem I now have?

 

Having desperately searched the Internet for this problem, I found that this was indeed a problem with ATI drivers and FS9 back in the 2003/05, but nothing more recent was available to help me, I am at the end of my rope now unless someone comes up with the magical solution!

 

Best regards,

[Propane 16]

OK, it sounds to me like the drivers seem to install without problems while the actual display driver does not get properly installed. Perhaps this is due to leftover pieces from older drivers, cleanup errors or whatever. Something that has sometimes done the trick for me when all other common solutions failed it something fairly simple:

 

- Download the proper driver package

- Run it, and let it extract the files to either the default location or one you specify

- Open the Device Manager, select your Display Adapter

- Right-click and choose to Update Driver Software

- Manually browse to the folder where you let the driver package extract it's files, instead of letting Windows automatically search for stuff

- Make sure to tick the box to search subfolders as well

- See what happens

 

It might see the proper driver files and install them correctly where the original installer failed and thus fix the problem. This has helped me out several times after driver installations failed to work. You can try it right now or do a quick cleanup again before attempting it:

 

- Uninstall anything AMD/ATI related (run the Install Manager, and simply uninstall all).

- Check your Program Files folder and/or Documents & Settings folders, remove the AMD, ATI and ATI Technologies folders if they are still there

- Check to see if there is an AMD folder in the root of C:\, if so, remove it.

- Run CCleaner to remove temporary files (please check the settings to prevent removing cookies or passwords you don't want to have to fill in again, I suggest only ticking the boxes for temp files)

- Run CCleaner for the registry as well (create a backup so you can revert should anything seem to have messed up)

 

So far for the uninstallation. Seems like a lot of steps, but it's really just about 30 seconds to 1 minute of work. Next, installation:

 

- Download the proper driver package

- Run it, and let it extract the files to either the default location or one you specify

- Let it install what components it can (perhaps check if 3D acceleration is working after installation, if so, problem solved)

- Reboot, just as an added measure for the system to cleanup or change system files

- Open the Device Manager, select your Display Adapter

- Right-click and choose to Update Driver Software

- Manually browse to the folder where you let the driver package extract it's files, instead of letting Windows automatically search for stuff

- Make sure to tick the box to search subfolders as well

- See what happens

 

Please note that the last time I used this was in Windows 7 and it has been years since I have used XP, so I might not have all the terms or options correct, or perhaps they are found elsewhere.

[ARCO 245]

Thank you Jasper for your detailed and clear instructions, but no joy, I still have everything working fine on my two displays (CCC and drivers) with the exception of the 3D acceleration in the DXdiag, I was very cautious in this last install to select the driver manually as you suggested but no change!

 

Is there any way to reactivate 3D acceleration by other means than what was already proposed (meaning outside of the 8 ways proposed by Microsoft which did not work on the link posted by Ron above)?

[ronski 1]

What a nightmare, problem solving can be a real pain, so I'm just looking at the windows side of this. haven't used ATI that much.

 

just for testing, I would disconnect the second display and use only one monitor untill sorted.

 

"Your computer cannot currently use 3D hardware acceleration. Software 3D mode has been enabled. Some graphical features may not appear in software mode."

 

have you tried re-installing direct X ?

 

software mode has been enabled somehow,

If the options in DXdiag are greyed out, and cannot be changed, the next place to look is;

 

1.Right click desktop > properties >settings >advanced > troubleshoot. The slider should be all the way to the right.

 

2.the registry.

Did you look at the registry key for this?

 

start-run-regedit

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Direct3D\Drivers

click on drivers and in the right vane look for 'software only' it should read.. 0x00000000 (0) ie, disabled

If it reads 0x00000000 (1) then double click on 'software only' and change the value data to 0 (zero)

 

This will disable the software only mode and should allow 3D acceleration. :unsure:

 

I'm unsure if you already checked this, if it reads OK, ie, say's it's disabled (0) then next, we can look a little deeper into the device.

 

Go to Start >run >type in > cmd

when the cmd.exe opens type in the following

 

SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1

Press Enter.

Then type in devmgmt.msc and then Enter to start up Device Manager from the command prompt:

leave cmd window open, Once you are in Device Manager, go to the View menu and choose Show Hidden Devices, which will show all the device drivers including things that aren’t currently installed in your computer.

 

Then expand your display device, there should be only one, but may be more. Double click on the ATI card to check 'this device is working properly. etc. Note; be careful deleting hidden devices, some are needed for things like hot swapping etc.

 

If possible post a screen shot, or please let me know exactly what you found. Especially any conflicts. It really helps to know.

Then we can move on to something else.

 

 

I'm sure your getting tired of it, :Thinking: I'm sure I would have gone for a format and reinstall of windows by now.

 

Ron.

[FIVE-BY-FIVE 453]

Why do you guys make life so difficult for yourselves? You just need to let the installer do it's job. All this uninstalling and cleaning is totally unnecessary. New drivers are installed automatically. Betas? What do you think they're going to do for you? Wait for releases.

It's OK, I'm alright now. :blink:

 

Ron's right :drinks:

[ARCO 245]

Hi Ron, thanks again for your kind help, be sure that if it were not for the huge FS reinstall that would (will?) take me several days I would not hesitate one second to go for the complete reformat job...Having gone through your points:

1. Slider is fully on the right
    
   
2. I did check the registry when you posted your first set of advices, but it was already with a 0 (I did by, the way, try each of the Microsoft 8 solutions on the link you sent me)
    
   
3. Yes the correct card (Radeon HD 4870) is working correctly, however there is a second device in this section: BB capture driver, can this be a factor? Here is screenshot of it
   

 

 

With reiterated thanks and best regards,

[ronski 1]

hi Jean claude,

 

Thanks for the screen shot etc.

 

The BB capture driver is part of the Blueberry Flashback display suite, BB FlashBack is a Windows-based screen recording program and, YES, they are well known for disabling 3D acceleration.

 

Do you use blueberry at all? .

 

 

If you don't use it, then most definately uninstall it, but first locate the software and use the uninstall program to remove, then repeat the steps above and delete it (uninstall ) from device manager. If it's still there.

 

This is from BBsoftware Tech support; follow it to uninstall;

http://www.bbsoftwar...opic&postid=884

 

You can see it descibes your problem. Probably it was reinstalled when you did a system restore, who knows.

 

Ron.

 

Ps. I first mistakenly thought it was Blackberry phone so I've edited this post.