orangeish

Hello everyone. This seems like a really good place to ask about my problem; I stumbled on this place while searching for info on Radeon driver issues and everyone here seems really well informed. I'm completely at a loss of how to resolve this without formatting and reinstalling Windows, which I'd rather not do just yet.

EPOX EP-8HMMI-A mainboard
Athlon64 3200+
1GB RAM in two 512MB sticks
Radeon X1300 Pro, 256MB – AGP
Enermax 550W PSU..with enough power on the 12V rail; I don’t remember rating exactly but I bought it specifically with this machine in mind, and haven’t added hardware since.

Team Fortress 2 crashed about a minute after I started playing. Well, whatever, it's a beta. I decided to start troubleshooting by upgrading to the latest video drivers; BIG MISTAKE. After installing them I found no 3d application would run. No Source-engine games. Also tried were GTA:San Andreas and Supreme Commander. Sometimes the crash will happen when playing a flash file. Occasional corruption of the desktop happens, but doesn't cause a crash.
Crashes look like this: graphics stutter and halt, mouse stops responding, keyboard input has no effect. Several seconds later the screen blanks and displays "Out of Sync." Hard reset is necessary to get things moving again.

Before installation of the Catalyst 7.9 drivers the system was perfectly stable, and performance was good in all games I've tried. The driver release notes do state this version has issues with X1050 AGP cards but mine is an X1300 Pro AGP card, so I should be safe, right? Right? Thanks ATI.

Since the problem started I've tried playing with BIOS settings as suggested by ATI's help pages, along with other fixes. DirectX has no problems. BIOS is up to date, as well as motherboard drivers. Graphics and sound hardware acceleration settings have no effect, likewise reducing the game video settings and performance options in Catalyst Control Center. Of course I've tried other versions of Catalyst drivers, but it seems I can't uninstall the 7.9s entirely. The problem persists. Either the 7.9 installation is leaving something behind, or it introduced a hardware fault; I don't think that second one is likely. I’ve tried several versions – 7.7, 7.6, 7.5, 6.10, 5.11 and the latest Omega drivers. Nothing.

These are the steps taken to uninstall drivers and install older ones:

reboot into safe mode
uninstall ATI driver/software from add/remove programs
reboot into safe mode
run DriverCleaner to hopefully remove all remnants of driver
reboot
install new (old version) driver
reboot
load Half Life, which with its game-engine-rendered main menu provides a good test
watch computer crash
curse
reboot

So that's it. Any help would be appreciated.

Dyre Straits

Greetings and welcome to DriverHeaven!

When you uninstall the drivers this time, remove the C:\ATI folder and any ATI sub-folders in Program Files.

Run CCleaner's Cleaner application and the Issues application to clear out any leftover Registry Entries. CCleaner - Home

Reboot and try installing the 7.6 drivers. Any from that point on have shown problems with AGP setups.

Good luck!

__________________

orangeish

Hello and thanks!
I've been using DriverCleaner to remove things like C:\ATI, ATI stuff in Program Files and registry entries. I didn't see anything remaining.
I tried CCleaner but after using it and installing 7.6 drivers the problem's still here. No changes.

You mentioned the Issues application - is this separate from CCleaner itself? I didn't see a download link for 'issues' on that site.

Also, my standard desktop resolution is 1280x960. When I remove drivers and reboot, Windows starts with 1280x1024. I can't remember what the standard is for XP with only its own video drivers, shouldn't it be lower? If so that would be a good hint the uninstalling didn't work.