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#1
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VGASafe makes my head go funny
Right.
I have the cat3.7 drivers, which have been the most stable ATI offering for some time, but now I hear that the 4.x ones are looking good, so thought Id give them a whirl. Every time I uninstall the ATI driver, I get down to VGASafe drivers, which, from what I understand, is what XP uses when it can find no other suitable drivers that will work without conflicts. Its XP's way of saying 'You nearly ended up with a blank screen, but I just saved you, clever OS that I am! .... um.... although you cant really fix the problem easily now, so you're prolly still in a mess, its just that you get to look at the UI in 640x400 as well this way'. I get this VGASafe 'feature' even If I tell XP to use VGA drivers at bootup (f8) trouble is that ATI drivers refuse to install over VGASafe coming up with some 'there is a problem that prevents these drivers installing, try again with VGA drivers'. so once I get to a boot up with VGASafe, I'm stuck, the easiest way out is to go back to the installed cat drivers (if I got there with F8) or a repair reinstall of XP (if I got there by uninstalling the existing cat drivers and normal reboot) and only then can I install the updated drivers (if I'm lucky). Reinstalling the AGP drivers for the MOBO doesn't help either, although some web pages seem to imply that's the deep seated problem behind all this. Anyone find a way out of this vicious circle that doesnt involve pain and suffering on a grand scale? ATI drivers with a proper install that don't require a previous driver uninstall (so you can then roll back if anything untoward happens) would be nice, but hey,that's ATI. S |
#2
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On Tue, 20 Apr 2004 16:03:46 +0100, "Sham B"
wrote: Right. I have the cat3.7 drivers, which have been the most stable ATI offering for some time, but now I hear that the 4.x ones are looking good, so thought Id give them a whirl. Every time I uninstall the ATI driver, I get down to VGASafe drivers, which, from what I understand, is what XP uses when it can find no other suitable drivers that will work without conflicts. Its XP's way of saying 'You nearly ended up with a blank screen, but I just saved you, clever OS that I am! .... um.... although you cant really fix the problem easily now, so you're prolly still in a mess, its just that you get to look at the UI in 640x400 as well this way'. I get this VGASafe 'feature' even If I tell XP to use VGA drivers at bootup (f8) trouble is that ATI drivers refuse to install over VGASafe coming up with some 'there is a problem that prevents these drivers installing, try again with VGA drivers'. so once I get to a boot up with VGASafe, I'm stuck, the easiest way out is to go back to the installed cat drivers (if I got there with F8) or a repair reinstall of XP (if I got there by uninstalling the existing cat drivers and normal reboot) and only then can I install the updated drivers (if I'm lucky). Reinstalling the AGP drivers for the MOBO doesn't help either, although some web pages seem to imply that's the deep seated problem behind all this. Anyone find a way out of this vicious circle that doesnt involve pain and suffering on a grand scale? ATI drivers with a proper install that don't require a previous driver uninstall (so you can then roll back if anything untoward happens) would be nice, but hey,that's ATI. S Did you uninstall the ATI drivers or remove them with the ATI Software Uninstaller, S? There are several different Windows Standard VGA drivers, and it seems you need to have the correct one (not always the one Windows thinks is correct, and not always the same one for different cards) running to satisfy the ATI installer. I've always found that the best way to make sure you get the right one is to uninstall all your ATI software and drivers from Add/Remove Programs, uninstalling the display driver last. Reboot and the right VGA driver should be in place. _Then_ run the ATI Software Uninstaller (or cat-uninstaller.exe if you had separate drivers installed) to clear the old stuff off your system. Alternatively, you should be able to install the drivers manually. patrickp - take five to email me |
#3
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"Sham B" wrote in message t.net... Right. I have the cat3.7 drivers, which have been the most stable ATI offering for some time, but now I hear that the 4.x ones are looking good, so thought Id give them a whirl. Every time I uninstall the ATI driver, I get down to VGASafe drivers, which, from what I understand, is what XP uses when it can find no other suitable drivers that will work without conflicts. Its XP's way of saying 'You nearly ended up with a blank screen, but I just saved you, clever OS that I am! .... um.... although you cant really fix the problem easily now, so you're prolly still in a mess, its just that you get to look at the UI in 640x400 as well this way'. I get this VGASafe 'feature' even If I tell XP to use VGA drivers at bootup (f8) trouble is that ATI drivers refuse to install over VGASafe coming up with some 'there is a problem that prevents these drivers installing, try again with VGA drivers'. so once I get to a boot up with VGASafe, I'm stuck, the easiest way out is to go back to the installed cat drivers (if I got there with F8) or a repair reinstall of XP (if I got there by uninstalling the existing cat drivers and normal reboot) and only then can I install the updated drivers (if I'm lucky). Reinstalling the AGP drivers for the MOBO doesn't help either, although some web pages seem to imply that's the deep seated problem behind all this. Anyone find a way out of this vicious circle that doesnt involve pain and suffering on a grand scale? ATI drivers with a proper install that don't require a previous driver uninstall (so you can then roll back if anything untoward happens) would be nice, but hey,that's ATI. I had the same problem with Win2k. Until I installed the graphics card using one of the the Win2k standard drivers I couln't get it to recognise my card at all - just stayed with that damned vgasave. Try installing standard basic WinXP VGA drivers such as S3 Virge using the 'update driver' option from control panel/hardware/device manager. These should work OK and give you basic 640x480 VGA screen to work with (you may get corrupted images during bootup but the final windows screen should be OK). Then use the 'update driver' option from control panel/hardware/device manager to install ATI driver from inf file in folder where drivers are stored. You can then install any other ATI driver over the ones that you have installed. I have never bothered to uninstall CAT drivers - I just install new over the old and have never had a problem. I have even installed old over new without a problem. Tony |
#4
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Of course, you can always install 4.xx drivers on top of 3.7's ! No problems
for me so far tough. However, I like newest Omega drivers, as they enabled me to overclock 9600SE. |
#5
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hi Patrick
Did you uninstall the ATI drivers or remove them with the ATI Software Uninstaller, S? Uninstall. Whatever way I do it (including manual install), the new drivers dont seem to finish unless I do it as part of anOS reinstall. I think I must have faulty/incorrect standard vga drivers, so that must be why I keep going down to vgaSafe. I'll try to find a good set of VGA drivers and retry. thanks S |
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