FalconFour

Hopefully one of these days one of these Vista driver problem topics will get an answer!

I'm starting to hate ATI! Their support is *completely* hopeless. I won't even bother trying to bug Gateway about this. They wouldn't even help me with the crappy wireless card that came with this computer (which I have since replaced due to their ignorance) even on the OS that came with the machine! With Vista, I'm sure they wouldn't even bother responding to my question. Either that or, as usual, they'd be about as useful as pulling the string on a talking doll. ATI told me it wasn't their problem (their own driver isn't their problem? hello? are we hearing this?). Sending "Feedback" got me about as far as talking to a wall.

I shall now rattle off the countless problems I'm having with my Mobility Radeon 9600 under Vista.
All of the following are issues with the current ATI driver package:
- The built-in LCD is a mortal enemy of the operating system; it does not detect the screen nor does it even want to touch it.
- On boot, I get a cursor for about 2 seconds before the LCD is switched off and I have to standby/resume the PC with CRT unplugged to show the screen again.
- I am stuck at 1024x768 on a 1280x800 native screen due to the first issue.
The following issues are common to both the ATI driver *and* the MS supplied driver:
- BIOS Fn+F3 hot key for switching LCD/CRT does not work - if I do press it with a CRT attached, however, it's locked on CRT and will not switch back to LCD without standby/resume with CRT unplugged.
- Clicking "detect displays" does nothing. Or if it does (randomly), it does the same as the above issue.
- Horrible performance in video playback and higher-resolution display (via CRT, ugh). 3d performance is half decent but playing even Quake II at highest settings for more than 30 seconds locks up the system and scrambles the screen with lines.
- The idle timeout on the screen, which is supposed to turn it off after a period of inactivity, totally does not. It blanks the screen but leaves it on.
- There are absolutely no settings to turn off screen expansion. It overrides my BIOS setting of "Disabled".
- This! NoFullscreen4U!.png
- Probably more issues I haven't yet noticed (3 so far added above)

Is ATI ever going to come back to testing the 9600 or are they going to throw away their old users and leave us with all the problems? Under XP, I had zero problems with the Omega drivers (thank god for Omega. where would notebook users be without him?!). Everything worked beautifully, flawlessly, without any problems at all. I did have the scrambled-screen problem as mentioned above, every now and then, but not nearly as quickly as 30 seconds. It'd have to be playing for hours.

Or is there a way to get an old XP driver to hack its way into Vista?

Really need some help here, because I've had just about enough with this crappy MS driver!

__________________

FalconFour

You know what's sad... with the exception of the 3d problem, every single one of those problems can be traced directly to the display detection in the drivers. What did they break in the detection to cause my LCD to be completely not detected?!

In Device Manager, with the LCD running, I have no "Monitors" section (and hence, no monitors). With the external flat display, I get a Generic PnP monitor and 1024x768. I think that should be a very strong clue as to what's going on...

With the ATI driver I'm stuck with this (after I bring the screen back with a standby/resume)...


Stretching is off in my BIOS but the driver is... somehow turning it back on. And there is no option to turn it back off...

FalconFour

I dare say this forum is about as helpful as talking to a diary. Talking. Not even writing. Just talking. To a book.

Anyway... *oy*. I went to these drivers. Now, I not only have my display detected with Catalyst, and can control the irritating stretching, but I also actually have it detected in Device Manager and can use an external monitor as a second screen! This knocked off quite a few issues except for the "This system does not support fullscreen mode" crap for command prompts... I tried doing alt-enter on a command prompt and was faced neatly with a blue square of death. Not a blue screen... a blue square. No writing on it at all, and it was neatly centered in the middle of my screen. Woot.

Meanwhile, here's what I got before then...


ATI, go back to the old drivers. Quit handing them off to Microsuck to get fucked with, fucked up, and "signed"... because they ALWAYS screw something up.

edit: It seems that the only way you can get the LCD to be detected after the driver is installed (e.g. after rebooting) is to stop and restart the driver (disable/enable). No idea what stupidity causes that...

Judas

Laptop/notebook make and model and year manufactured?

Specs of this product?

have you talked to the company responcible for manufacturing your notebook.

Once again i repeat, ATI isn't full responcible for your problems. I very likely doubt it they are at all. Some manufacturers don't strickly follow the reference designs they receive and make thier own modifications which break alot of things. Don't yell at ati, give your notebook manufacturer a call and give them shit.

__________________

FalconFour

It's in my profile info (off to the side) but I'll elaborate a bit. Gateway m505, made around late 2004/early 2005 (can't tell, exactly). Gateway sure as hell isn't going to help me. Like I said in the first message, they wouldn't even help me with a driver issue with the wireless card that came with it, on the OS that came with it. They sure as hell aren't going to help with Vista. The support guys know about a tenth as much about this laptop as I've already learned. They're totally worthless. It's like... the people that designed this system are still around to ask, but you'd never be able to talk to them (the only people that actually know). Kinda sad, really.

So if it's not ATI's fault, who is it? Is the chip not directly connected to the screen? I didn't think there'd be room for error there... the chip controls what you see on the screen, plain and simple, and the drivers tell the chip what to do. The chip's doing something goofy, that it didn't do in another OS on the same system, therefore it's simple logic that the driver is to blame - right...?

Judas

Theres always room for error, and i'd betcha it's gateways fault specifically. I may be wrong, but i am sure that gateway made some form of modification to the design.

ATI produced the chip, it is put onboard a PCB that they make and ship to other possible major manufacturers, this is called a Reference Design. From there, in your example, gateway has the choice to either STICK with the Same PCB Reference design for the chip OR like most notebooks, most likely impose slightly changes to it and then make slight adjustments to the drivers or software packages they install on that notebook to work correctly. This is where most people have issues because something is not STANDARD. (which imo, pisses me right the hell off to).

Anyways, although the idea that a chip is directly implanted into the screen or near it at least would be kinda nice, but there are dozens of little circutries and connection made that might have been changes slightly.


Trust me, your beef should be with gateway, they should be able to tell you if you notebook is vista capable or not. And don't let them screw you around, if your not getting anywhere, don't hold back, ask for the supervisor and just keep working up from there till you get an answer.... If it requires you getting at all rough and stern, do it. But don't bother yelling or swearing as that'll just not get you anywhere at all.

Sorry about your issues again though.

__________________

FalconFour

I really don't mean to be a pressing jackass here... but seriously though. The chip connects up to the AGP bus pin-for-pin (with some few components along the way, e.g. capacitors, power smoothers, etc, but those would come from the power block anyway, right?), then from the chip's outputs to the display connection... right? I didn't think there would be a reference design for a notebook setup. I mean, I can understand it for desktop boards. Those are designed to fit the widest number of systems, be the most powerful, so on and so forth, while a notebook is just a chip in a system set up with a screen it's also hard-wired to. Still don't see any room for error there...

I think what would set my mind at ease is, is there anyone at all out there with a 9600, running Vista, that does work?

As far as Gateway goes... technically they don't even have any obligation to help me out at all, since I'm both using an out-of-warranty system as well as an unsupported OS. I could be talking to the CEO of Gateway and all I'd get is a "please stop bothering us" answer. The chip does work, completely, under Windows XP, so they (as well as I) would assume the problem is not Gateway's fault. *shrug*

But I am glad that at least someone is replying here... I thought this place was a ghost town.

edit: What could Gateway do anyway, print me a new board?

__________________

Judas

So under XP, you can use the ATI Catalyst software and packages.... without a single hitch.... (meaning you can use a OEM Non specific installation cd to install windows onto that notebook without a single hitch, along with all the references drivers)

If that is the case, then perhaps there is likely a case that there is either A: Microsoft and that chips setup being completely unsupported. B: ATI are still working out the issues with vista drivers, being the first ones out, i'd expect them to get thier retail products full support before moving onto Notebooks chipsets.

At which point, the only suggestion would be to wait.

If i had a 9600 mobility ati notebook, i'd be glad to be of service to try and install vista and see what the results are.. but unfortuneatly i don't have that option.

__________________

Judas

btw.. yes i agree, you wouldn't get very far with gateway, they are already pleased that you purchased something and by all means have no reason to even talk to you.

Reason i like retail, warranty lasts years longer usually, and even if it's outa warranty period, you can still at least get some form of answers.

__________________

FalconFour

Exactly. I don't even have the original installation CDs for this thing. I never used the version that came with it - I've always used my own "OEM" version of WinXP (off a, er, downloaded CD and the serial on the bottom of the PC). I run it through nLite to remove all the BS. Then I install the Omega drivers and it works flawlessly. Everything I mentioned above works perfectly. In fact, it worked so well, that every time someone uses my computer to play games on, they comment on how smooth and fast it runs compared to their desktop system with 128mb cards and whatnot. That's what has me so upset... I totally lost that edge now.

As you mentioned, it does seem that my only solution is to wait. I just hope that I can provide some input to ATI to get them to un-screw the stuff they did with the Vista drivers. Everything was working with generic WinXP drivers but now that XP drivers don't work in Vista, I have to wait for them to go back and fix it for older cards. Vista is going to be a major headache for a lot of older hardware users... Vista should run on any system with 1gb RAM and a 64mb+ video card, which covers a lot of potentially unsupported hardware. Especially non-critical components like printers, sound controllers, scanners, MP3 players, etc... talk about a nightmare. I really hope Microsoft comes up with a "legacy patch" that allows older drivers to interface with the Vista driver model...

edit: FWIW I'm still having almost all the above mentioned problems... even with the older driver. It didn't help a thing, other than that I can now do dual monitors if I want to. Strange...

__________________

Judas

Submit a ticket asap is another suggestion though

it's unfortunate... but, it's just so hard to figure out notebooks because you never know if they followed the standardized rules or not...

__________________

FalconFour

True.

By submit a ticket, do you mean to ATI's support? I already bitched at their support, and they said, basically, to take a hike and bitch at Gateway. When told that it wasn't Gateway's fault, they basically threw a book in my face and told me to F off. Sending a feedback thingy to the Catalyst guys, I told them pretty much everything but haven't heard anything in reply. *shrug*...

__________________

DTD2003

FalconFour, I have found that the new Microsoft drivers are relatively stable version 8.31.100.321. It's the WDDM drivers that install automatically if no other drivers are found. I am able to get my native desktop resolution but after booting, I have to force sleep mode and then awaken it to get to the desktop.... Also, internet browsing occasionally results is a 'shaking' screen??? Here's hoping they fix this... I guess Vista is still beta.

>GSXR<mrbusa

How does the shared memory work on that system?
Is it configured to meet the requirements of Vista?

Is your copy of Vista a full OEM, or retail version?

If my questions sound noobish it is because I know sh_t about laptops. You wanted posts though, so here ya go. If there were other people having the same or very similar issues as yours then there would be more input in this thread.

DLock

hi, first post here. I have a samsung x50 laptop with ati x700 chip, running vista ultimate retail. and have the same problem with lcd turning off when booting up and need to force sleep mode get back. Mine also worked fine with rc1 driver but i dont want to use that old shit. So i know this will sound crazy but i installed the new radion driver and not the Mobility one and all works fine. dont get it but it works. just shows some cross fire stuff in the ati control pannel which i dont have.But besides that all works fine games too.Hope this may help u guys out untill this is fixed by ati. And samsung has no support at all for vista with this laptop..................

SamsungX50

Hi DLock
I have the same laptop and the same problems. Which driver did you install exactly? Did you enforce the installation of version 8.351.3 which comes with Catalyst 7.3? If yes, which device did you choose from the list? There are many X700 devices in the list:
Radeon X550/X700 Series (2x)
Radeon X550/X700 Series Secondary
RADEON X700 SE
RADEON X700 SE Secondary
Radeon X700 Series
RADEON X700 Series (4x)
Radeon X700 Series Secondary
RADEON X700 Series Secondary (4x)
I don't know what's the difference between these devices...

Zardon

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/driverhe...ml#post1047049

SamsungX50

My problem is that the internal LCD is not recognized (doesn't appear in the device manager). Therefore dual-monitor mode doesn't work correctly.
The internal LCD appears in the device manager after closing the lid for 10 seconds. But then I always have to change the primary monitor form extern to intern and re-arrange the monitors.
Can the mobility modder.net solve this problem?
Enforcing the installation of catalyst 7.4 (desktop) did not help.

Ananas

Same problem where with the m505x. I'm pretty sure the detection isn't working correctly. I've just tried with 7.5 patched and it doesn't seem to make a difference. I had it working for a brief moment just after installing once, but as soon as I adjusted the display resolution the display switched to the external. I think it has to do with TMM and the LCD display not being detected correctly. For example by default the LCD is not a monitor, but when the external display is connected that is detected as a monitor, so LMM automatically switches from the laptop LCD to the external display. I tried disabling LMM but that didn't help much. Also tried 7.5 and had no luck.

I might consider switching to the RC1 drivers in the mean time to use my external display.

FalconFour

Just a small update from me here... Vista is long gone on that computer and won't be touching any of my computers ever again (unless MS releases a way to remove the DRM hard-codings and all the related driver/system consumer-oppression lockdowns). And that computer is also gone... it was still my best laptop

If you've got Vista... the only advice I can offer is to quit torturing your computer and go back to XP ;-)

__________________