DRIVER INSTALLATION GUIDE FOR n00bs

Genius · Dec 18, 2002, 05:25 AM

Updated 12-20-2002 at 6:15PM EST

DISCLAIMER

WINDOWS XP ONLY

I am in no way responsible for any problems you may have by following this guide. Read through it very carefully, and print it off on a color printer if you only have one PC available. This guide will break the ATI Multimedia Center. You will need to reinstall it afterwards. Some of the steps may seem excessive or unecessary, I know this, but they are there to ensure successful uninstallation.

Step 1: Disable your Ethernet card, if you have one. This will prevent Microsoft from taking over and installing WHQL drivers from the Windows Update site without your permission. To do this, unplug your Ethernet cable or simply go into your device manager and right click on your Ethernet card and choose Disable. See the following illustration.

Your Ethernet card will now have a red X to indicate that it is disabled.

Step 2: Uninstall your existing Video card and drivers

Method A: Add/Remove Programs.
Go into your control panel and choose the Add/Remove Programs icon. If you are currently using an ATI Radeon based card, you should see the following (unless you're using the default Windows XP drivers).

Highlight the item you wish to remove and click Change/Remove. Each time you uninstall the ATI Control Panel or Video Drivers, you will be asked if you wish to restart your computer. Click no. If you have another type of video card such as, God forbid, an Nvidia or Matrox adapter, you may have an uninstall program for that as well. It will be up to you to determine what is safe to uninstall. If you don't have an uninstall program for your display adapter, don't worry, we have another method.

Method B: Device Manager
This method is intended for uninstalling oem adapters, or any adapter without an uninstall program accessible through Add/Remove programs. Go into your Device Manager by right clicking the My Computer icon, and clicking properties on the popup menu. This will take you to a screen similar to this:

In this window, click the tab labelled Hardware, then Device Manager, which will take you here:

Click the + symbol to the left of Display Adapters and you will see at least one adapter, such as you see above. Right click on the adapter you wish to remove (better remove all of them for this guide to work, otherwise enjoy your unstable system

). You will see a small menu with an option to uninstall. Click it. You will be prompted to authorize the uninstallation, and you obviously click yes to proceed. Afterwards, you will also be prompted to restart your computer for the changes to take effect. Click No.

Step 3: INF purge
Files with a .inf extension are files that Windows uses to get information as to how your hardware should be installed; which files to copy, registry entries to be created, etc. Each .inf file contains a hardware identifier key that tells Windows Hey, that's me! when installing new hardware. These are what will cause your video card to automatically install itself upon reboot. Microsoft has also added the ability to find your hardware identifier in their own databases on Windows Update as well, allowing Windows to download and install drivers automatically (This is why we disabled your Ethernet adapter in Step 1).
Open up an Explorer window (right click My Computer, click Explore). In your Explorer window, browse to C:\Windows\inf and find the following files:

Note: If you do not see an inf folder, you need to set the Windows Explorer to show all files. To do this, in the Explorer Window, click Tools, then Folder Options. In the window that pops up, click the View tab. On this page you will see a box labelled Advanced with several check boxes to enable and disable various features. Go to the section labelled Hidden Files and Folders. Tick the radio button in front of Show hidden files and folders and remove the checks from Hide extensions for known file types and Hide protected operating system files (Recommended).

Delete them (backing up by copying to another location is recommended). Though not all of these files are related to the ATI Radeon card, I remove them all myself anyways. Deleting these keys will only need to be done once. The files will not be replaced by subsequent installs and only a reinstallation of Windows XP or Service Pack 1. If you already know which ones don't belong, remove only the necessary files. Remember, this is a n00b guide. If you own a different type of video card, such as Nvidia or Matrox, there are specific .inf files for these. For example, nv3.inf or nv4_disp.inf for Nvidia cards. For each .inf file, there will be a corrosponding file with the extension .PNF. Remove (and backup) these as well for consistency. Once you have removed the .inf files corrosponding to your video adapter, we'll move on to the next step. OEMxx.inf files. These are created when you install a device with drivers from the manufacturer. The following image will show you what I mean:

You don't want to delete all the files you see here, but the ones we want to delete will vary from system to system. What you will need to do is open each oemxx.inf file and examine the contents to determine if it belongs to your display adapter. For example, in the following image, I open oem7.inf.

Notice how the highlighted line says Installation INF for the ATI display driver. This tells me that it belongs to my ATI card (duh!). We can safely delete this file and it's corrosponding .PNF file. Go through all of your oemxx.inf files and remove all pertaining to your video card. Different manufacturers will have telltale signs at the beginning of each file. Use your better judgement as to what should be removed. There may be multiple .inf's and .PNF's for your hardware. Remove them all. Got it? Good. We're getting there.

Special Note: If you are using ATI's uninstall program through Add/Remove programs, do not delete the oemxx.inf files until AFTER you have run the uninstall. Doing so will cause the uninstall to return you an error. Follow this guide in order.

Update: If you see any .PNF files without a matching oemxx.inf, it was likely removed by ATI uninstallation procedure. This appears to be new to the Catalyst drivers. You can safely remove any unmatched .PNF files.

Genius · Dec 18, 2002, 05:26 AM

Step 4: Reboot your computer, it's time to clean the Windows Registry.

Windows will start back up and detect your video card as if new, assuming you've followed instructions properly to this point. If it automatically installs drivers still, you may have missed an .inf file or two. Never fear, let Windows do it's thing, reboot, and start over.
Now that Windows is finding your new hardware, it should be prompting you how you wish to go about installing your drivers.

Click cancel. The prompt for new hardware installation may pop up more than once, click cancel each time until the funny hardware detection icon no longer appears in the system tray (generally the lower right hand corner of the screen, by the clock). Once we have passed the new hardware installation by cancelling, it's time to dig into the Windows Registry and remove the biggest cause of all problems when installing new video cards or drivers. Open up RegEdit by clicking your Start button, then Run, and typing regedit in the command window. Click OK or hit Enter on your keyboard. Regedit will open and you should see something like this:

Browse down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE and click the + sign to the left of Software, you will see one or more keys for your previous display adapter, as seen here for ATI cards:

Delete them all. If you are upgrading from another brand of Video card, once again, there may be some information left over from them. While not necessary to remove (shouldn't cause any problems), you can remove anything you know belongs to another manufacturer (i.e. NV... for Nvidia). On to the Next set of registry keys to remove.

Browse down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Video\ and click the + sign to the left of Video. You should see something similar to this:

Delete all subkeys of video. If Windows happens to return an error (I was unable to reproduce this error for a screenshot) when deleting any of these keys, such as access denied, don't worry, there's an easy solution. Expand the key in question down to it's last entry, and begin deleting the sub-secitons first. See the following illustration.

Delete up the chain until you can delete the Video subkey itself (this is safe to remove, but not necessary, it will be recreated during the driver installation).

Now browse down to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es registry key. Somewhere under services you should see any services specific to your video card, ATI in this example:

Delete the keys Ati HotKey Poller, ATI Smart, ati2mtag, and any other keys with the prefix ATI.

If you hadn't notice before you expanded the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet key, there are two keys: ControlSet001 and ControlSet002 (002 may be 003 or another variant of 00x on some systems). The ControlSet001 key is an exact mirror of CurrentControlSet, so if you happen to notice many of the same keys located in these sections, you will know why. When you delete a key from CurrentControlSet or ControlSet001, the changes will be made to the other. The key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002 is a backup key that contains the information required to boot your computer using the Last Known Good configuration, which is an option you can choose by pressing F8 during Windows 2000/XP boot initialization. You can go through this key and perform the steps listed above, but it is absolutely not necessary because it is rewritten every time your computer boots sucessfully.

More specific information on these registry keys can be found here if you wish to educate yourself (this is not a bad thing

).

On to the final registry key. This one can be dangerous if you're not careful. For the record, this step does not appear to be necessary in the more recent Catalyst drivers as ATI's uninstall procedure seems to remove the proper keys. Anyways, browse up to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}. Expand the key using the + to the left (I'm sure you've figured out this step by now). See here:

Delete all subfolder keys that follow the naming convention of 0000, 0001, 0002, etc. If Windows gives you any errors when attempting to delete these keys, use the same method as you used for the Video keys. Delete all subkeys and string values first. Do not delete anything out of the root of {4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}. I did this once and you get a black screen on reboot and you're pretty much screwed. If you happen to muck this key up, you can fix it without a reinstallation of Windows. You'll need this file to fix it. Should you need to use this file, you'll have to load Windows XP in safe mode by pressing F8 during the XP boot initialization. Once in safe mode just double click the file and reply Yes to the prompt. Reboot and you should have video again. Don't let this scare you though, Windows will give you an error if you make an attempt to delete this key. The only way to delete it is to manually delete each string value first. See the following illustration for a better understanding:

Close regedit, we're all done here.

Reboot your computer.

Genius · Dec 18, 2002, 05:27 AM

Step 5: Driver Installation.
There are a few ways of doing this. The easiest and best way is the automatic method using the more recent ATI Catalyst drivers. The new setup does not require any previous driver to be installed, which is very nice. Keeps everything nice and clean. When Windows XP starts up this time, it will start the New Hardware Wizard:

Method A: Automatic installation

When you see this screen, be sure the radio button next to Install the software automatically (Recommended) is ticked and click Next. Then you'll see this:

Tick the radio button for No, do not connect to the Internet now and click Next.
You will see the following:

Check the box next to Don't prompt me again to install this software and click Finish.
Repeat aforementioned steps each time Windows prompts you for new hardware. You may be prompted several times, especially for the ATI All-in-Wonder series of cards. Once Windows has finished detecting all new hardware, you may proceed to run ATI's own installation. The latest Catalyst drivers will install fine using this method. Install the Video drivers, reboot, Install the WDM drivers (for All-in-Wonder and ViVo cards), reboot again, and finally, install the ATI Control Panel. Reboot a final time. At this point, you may wish to reinstall the ATI Multimedia Center as well because if you follow this guide, previous installations of MMC should be hosed. No big deal. I would love to include work arounds for this, but it is simply not worth the trouble. During this automatic installation process you may encounter a message:

.

If so, click Continue Anyway.

At this point your video card should be installed properly. If not, look between the monitor and the chair for any problems

Method B: Manual installation (no Smartgart)

To perform the manual installation, tick the radio button next to Install from a list or specific location (Advanced) and click Next. You will now be prompted to choose your search options:

Tick the radio button next to Search for the best driver in these locations and check only the box next to Include this location in the search: and then click the Browse button. You will see a small explorer Window:

Here you will need to browse to the location on your hard drive that contains the necessary ATI INF files. In this case I have extracted the driver files to the 6218 directory, as you can see in the installation. Then you highlight the 2KXP_INF directory (when you do so, the OK button will change from grey [inactive] to active). You can now click OK.

Note: If you cannot find a way to manually install some driver sets that come pre-packaged as an executable, start the auto installation procedure and cancel it after it decompresses into C:\ATI. Cancelling the setup does not delete the directory, at which point you are free to point a manual driver installation to the relevent directory.

You will be prompted with a Device selection window such as this:

Highlight the adapter that matches your own (you will often see duplicates, choose the first) and click Next. Windows will now begin installing your hardware. If at any time you are prompted with a message stating that The software you are installing for this hardware has not passed Windows Logo testing to verify its compatibility with Windows XP, click the Continue Anyway button.

Once installation has been completed, you may be prompted to restart your computer. Click No.
If you are prompted to install additional Video devices, You should choose Install the software automatically (Recommended) and click Next. Windows already has the correct identifiers from the first device, and will automatically find all files necessary to enable the rest (i.e. DVI/TV detected as a secondary adapter). If you continue to see additional New Hardware Wizards, your card may be searching for WDM drivers (All-in-Wonder/ViVo cards). At this point I will refer you back to the automatic install procedure, because there is no reason to manually install the WDM drivers. Once you have completed this manual install, reboot your computer. Install WDM drivers if necessary and reboot. Install Control Panel and reboot.

You will need to re-enable your Ethernet adapter as well. To do this refer to step one and choose Enable where you previously chose Disable.

Note: As some of you will no doubt notice, there are no instructions as to how and what files to physically remove from your hard drive. This was left out because I feel it will only add confusion to the already lengthy process. Any files left over on the hard drive after following this guide properly will be irrelevant. Aside from that, ATI's own installation routine now removes all but a few files, which will be overwritten during the reinstallation anyways.

A Note on BIOS settings

Kenai over at the Rage3D forums has made an interesting point and I decided it was best to include with the install guide, however unrelated to the actual install process.

If you cannot get your card running stable you may want to check the settings in your system's bios. There may be compatibility issues that crop up when enabling or disabling some settings. I have seen this before, most recently when I installed a GeForce ti 4400 in a friend's computer. Windows would hard lock on every boot until I disabled PCI Master Read Caching.

Kenai has provided the following bios settings for his Abit KT7e motherboard. This reference may provide some of you with stability issues a good starting point.

Fast Gate A20 Option : Enabled
Video BIOS shadowing : Disabled
Cowpimp over at Rage3D states that he experienced a strange problem that was corrected by enabling BIOS shadowing. When he would try to fast forward or rewind DVDs with shadowing disabled, it would cause the video to get corrupted by green horizontal lines. He got the recommendation from ATI technical support to enable this feature. This is a highly uncommon problem, and may or may not help you.
Video BIOS cacheable : Disabled
xxxxxx - xxxxxx shadow : All Disabled
IDE prefetch mode : Enabled
Init Display First : AGP
Assign IRQ for VGA : Enabled
PCI/VGA palette snoop : Disabled
PNP O/S installed : YES or AUTO
Video ram cacheable : Disabled
System bios cacheable : Disabled
Fast Writes : Disabled
AGP Transfer rate : Default
AGP Bus Turbo Mode: AGP Turbo DISABLED
Primary Frame Buffer: VGA Frame Buffer DISABLED
AGP Aperture Size: AGP Aperture DEFAULT or 64MB
Resource Control - AUTO
AGP Bus Mastering - ENABLED
Disable any manual configuration of PCI by setting these options to AUTO

Play with the various settings to determine what works best for you.

Addition for users with OpenGL problems.

Having trouble with anything OpenGL (Quake engine games, Counterstrike)?

You may want to try another ATI OpenGL driver. Generally, ATI's atioglxx.dll is interchangable between driver revisions. If you're having trouble with any games in particular, it is very easy to revert back to the last one that worked best for you.

Step 1: Download whatever driver package you need that you expect to contain your working OpenGL driver.

Step 2: Extract atioglxx.dl_ to your Windows Desktop. There are two methods for this.

Method 1: The driver package you downloaded might be able to be opened using WinZip or WinRAR. To find out, right click on the file and see if you see a WinZip or WinRAR context menu (for WinZip, you will see Open with WinZip and for WinRAR you will see Open with WinRAR. Click the corrosponding command (if you're using WinACE, you already know wtf your doing so don't cry).

The application window will pop up listing the contents of the driver package. Search through until you find atioglxx.dl_ and highlight it, then click Extract or Extract To. The extraction window will pop up. In the right hand pane, click Desktop (it will extract the file to your Desktop -duh). Now in the left hand side of the window, uncheck use folder names (WinZip) or check Do not extract pathnames (WinRAR). Now click the OK button in WinZip or the Extract button in WinRAR. The file should appear on your desktop.

Method 2: If the driver package cannot be opened with WinZip or WinRAR (because ATI thinks they are sneaky), just double click the file so the installation procedure begins. It should prompt for an extraction location before the installation actually begins. Just click OK to this. The files will extract and when the installation comes up, just hit cancel. Open up an Explorer window (right click the My Computer icon, left click explore. Browse to C:\ATI\xxxx. Dig through these folders until you find atioglxx.dl_ and right click the file. Left click Copy in the popup menu. Now minimize or close everything you have open and Right Click on an empty secton of your Desktop (no icons). In the popup menu, click Paste. The file should appear on your desktop if you have done everything correctly.

Step 3: Expand the file to something useful.
Click Start, then left click Run. Type cmd and click OK. A Windows XP command prompt will appear (looks like MS-Dos). At this prompt, type cd desktop and hit Enter on your keyboard. Next type expand atioglxx.dl_ atioglxx.dll and hit enter. You should see a file named atioglxx.dll appear on your Desktop. Good. Now close all open windows.

Step 4: Open up another Explorer window (right click My Computer, left click Explore. In the Explorer Window that pops up, browse to C:\Windows\System32. Locate the file atioglxx.dll and rename it to atioglxx.bak. Do this by right clicking on the file and clicking Rename. You will see a blinking cursor on the icon's name. Now that we have backed up atioglxx.dll to prevent any disasters, switch back to your Desktop and right click the file atioglxx.dll. Choose copy in the popup menu. Now switch back to the Explorer window showing C:\Windows\System32\. Click Edit from up under the top meu bar, then choose Paste. Your new OpenGL driver is now in place.

Junk · Dec 18, 2002, 07:58 AM

Wow, Genius..you have more time on your hands than I

BTW..what's the name of that XP Theme you're using? Is that with WindowBlinds or StyleXP?

Genius · Dec 18, 2002, 01:48 PM

An update for anyone who might suggest this in the future:

I have received a few PM's over at Rage3D mentioning the use of RegCleaner for eliminating these registry entries. I chose not to do this to avoid a seperate section RegCleaner alone. I think it would only add to the confusion. I have laid out the registry editing very well (I think) so that even a noob can handle it

Zarathustra · Dec 18, 2002, 06:09 PM

Damn man that's some nice work! I'll see if I can get this made into a sticky

digitalwanderer · Dec 18, 2002, 06:13 PM

Nice job Genius, this will really save us all a lot of typing.

Thanks again and good job, you've more than earned a sticky.

shuki · Dec 18, 2002, 09:41 PM

Right on!

Stafford · Dec 18, 2002, 10:05 PM

Wouldn't it be nice if ATI would create a Driver Pack that would overwrite or delete the previous Reg entries and Kinda do all the work for you! :P

digitalwanderer · Dec 18, 2002, 10:32 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Stafford
Wouldn't it be nice if ATI would create a Driver Pack that would overwrite or delete the previous Reg entries and Kinda do all the work for you! :P

I've really wondered about this since the Rage128 and still can't figure out why they can't come up with something like this.

Zarathustra · Dec 18, 2002, 11:44 PM

Damn that's a good point. But still Genius did some fantastic work here

Genius · Dec 19, 2002, 12:07 AM

I think it has something to do with Microsoft and/or WHQL. Microsoft has never removed hardware information from the registry, even if it is a device that requires no drivers other than what they provide. You remove that hard drive you put in temporarily to copy some files, it's ID is stuck in your registry for eternity (like Windows could survive without a reformat

).

Stafford · Dec 19, 2002, 03:03 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Genius
I think it has something to do with Microsoft and/or WHQL. Microsoft has never removed hardware information from the registry, even if it is a device that requires no drivers other than what they provide. You remove that hard drive you put in temporarily to copy some files, it's ID is stuck in your registry for eternity (like Windows could survive without a reformat ).

I believe you're right. Alot of it would have to do with the system restores as well, I would imagine.
Still it's a bloody bother, it really is alot of work.
Thanks for the guide, I have bookmarked it.

LeanWolf · Dec 19, 2002, 01:58 PM

I've been using the uninstall instruction from Cyborg's Drivers page and I've noticed some discrepencies..

only one of the four keys under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE - SYSTEM - CurrentControlSet - Control - Video pertains to your ATI card (or maybe 2 of 5 with some cards), why delete the others?
what about the same set of Video keys in ControlSet001 and 002? Are they deleted automatically?
in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -- SOFTWARE section, there is another ATI key in the Installed Options key. Did you forget it or is it not important?

Also, when installing the new drivers, why all that crap with the hardware install wizard (Step 5 Method A)? Can't you just cancel it and then install?

/andy

Genius · Dec 19, 2002, 06:11 PM

Quote:

only one of the four keys under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE - SYSTEM - CurrentControlSet - Control - Video pertains to your ATI card (or maybe 2 of 5 with some cards), why delete the others?

The others will be from either old adapters a user may have removed when installing the ATI card, or default Windows VGA. They can be removed because if they are ever needed, Windows will add them again. By removing them all, it eliminates any confusion. I have also found some problems with Powerstrip when having multiple keys here. It would crash when applying settings in the Catalyst Direct3D Control Panel in the Display Properties. I'm not sure if that's the exact cause of it, but after removing them the problem was solved.

Quote:

what about the same set of Video keys in ControlSet001 and 002? Are they deleted automatically?

ControlSet001 is a mirror image of CurrentControlSet. If you delete a key in either, it is deleted from the other. ControlSet002 appears to be a backup. The same keys can be removed from here as well, and thank you for reminding me to add a note about that. I thought about it yesterday but totally forgot. Removing the keys from ControlSet002 is not critical to a clean install , but it never hurts to be thorough. These entries will be re-backed up during the reinstallation.

Quote:

in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -- SOFTWARE section, there is another ATI key in the Installed Options key. Did you forget it or is it not important?

I have never seen this key. It may come from ATI Multi Media Center, which I do not use, or another card such as the All-in-Wonder. Could you please export this from the registry and e-mail it to me, as well as a screenshot? I will update the guide with it.

Quote:

Also, when installing the new drivers, why all that crap with the hardware install wizard (Step 5 Method A)? Can't you just cancel it and then install?

Possibly, I simply wrote it how I do it. I'm not sure why you called it all that crap, as the part you refer to is very short, but if a user wants to try it another way, more power to him

Genius · Dec 19, 2002, 08:37 PM

I have updated the guide with specific information regarding the registry keys ControlSet001 and ControlSet002.

Quick answer:

CurrentControlSet is the one your computer is currently using.

ControlSet001 is the one your computer most recently booted with, and is the current designated boot key.

ControlSet002 is the last known good boot, written as a mirror of ControlSet001 when your computer has sucessfully booted.

LeanWolf · Dec 19, 2002, 11:44 PM

Quote:

I have never seen this key. It may come from ATI Multi Media Center, which I do not use, or another card such as the All-in-Wonder. Could you please export this from the registry and e-mail it to me, as well as a screenshot?

Hmm.. i don't use the multimedia centre either, nor do i have an all-in-wonder card. I had this key in every one of my many recent uninstalls (trying out all of the recent new drivers), but now it's not there! Like i said, i learned about it from the uninstall guide here: http://drivers.driverheaven.net/misc.php?page=uninstall

Quote:

Possibly, I simply wrote it how I do it. I'm not sure why you called it all that crap, as the part you refer to is very short, but if a user wants to try it another way, more power to him

Sorry, didn't mean to offend! I just wonder if those three dialog boxes are necessary since they fail to install anything anyway. Is there a benefit to going through them as opposed to cancelling right off the bat?
Thanks for clearing up those other points. You set up a great guide for us nOObs!

/Andy

Genius · Dec 20, 2002, 02:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by luleandy
Is there a benefit to going through them as opposed to cancelling right off the bat?

I'm not entirely sure about this, I believe cancelling it will still accomplish the same thing. The reason I wrote it this way is based on experience I've had years ago with Windows 98. Hehe... with my old SB Live the Creative drivers could be installed automatically but only after Windows had tagged the hardware so to speak. If you cancelled during the detection phase, Creative's installer couldn't detect that the hardware was physically there. I didn't mean to sound defensive in my reply... It just sounded like you thought there were a whole bunch of steps before that point but there were actually like three quick steps

Sorry if I did sound defensive. I welcome any help and you more than helped by mentioning the ControlSet keys as I was able to provide excellent information regarding them and learned something myself in the process

Genius · Dec 20, 2002, 11:08 PM

Hey guys I'm in a bit of a bind. I have consumed 1.2 gb of traffic today alone (so far) through the hosting space my friend has provided me with, I realize it's alot to ask but I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could help out. If I can't get someone to take the images I'll have to take the guide down from here and see what I can work out with Rage3D, assuming they would even host it on their own. Apparently the guide is pretty popular.... who'd have figured

Zardon · Dec 20, 2002, 11:51 PM

all in PM genius

Motoki · Dec 21, 2002, 05:09 PM

I also have the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SOFTWARE>INSTALLED OPTIONS with ATI entries in it and I also have ATI entries under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>CURRENT USER>SOFTWARE. Note that I do have an AIW and also run with MMC installed, which I always uninstall when I am uninstalling the display drivers. I don't reccomend just leaving it be and reinstalling a new version over top of it, but if it works for you then by all means.

As for just cancelling out the auto install window, I have always done that every time I've done a new driver install, and believe me when I say I have done this lots and lots and lots of time :O and I never had any problems installing. IMHO, it might be slightly less confusing to the noobs to just hit cancel.

Another thing I wanted to mention is ATI reccomends installing the WDMs before the video card driver and without rebooting. I've never noticed much difference though either way. I always still get the pop up window asking me where the files are when I reboot and I always manually point it over to the inf. One annoying thing though is that it will ask for files like ksuser.sys which is already installed in windows (in the windows\system32 directory) but not in the same directory as the rest of the drivers to be installed, so I have to point it to the system32 directory, then back to the driver directory and back again to system32 etc.

Only other comments I would make is you really only have to delete the ati inf files once from your hd and then they are gone unless you reformat, so you might want to note that somewhere so people don't go looking for it if they've done this before. The oe inf files will have to be deleted every time though.

Also, I personally prefer adding another step inbetween uninstalling and installing the new drivers of rebooting, cancelling out the auto detect and searching for and deleting all files ati*.* on the C: drive, then rebooting again. I know in theory reinstalling the new drivers should overwrite them, but I could think of cases where it may not. For example if somehow the older driver was mistakenly dated after the newer, windows may view the older one as a more recent version and not install the new one or prompt the user about it, which may confuse someone into thinking the new driver really isn't new and not install it. I've seen this happen before in rare cases and just to be sure for sure I'd rather have all those files off the HD when I install. If course, with XP you also have to disable that bothersome drivercache, which requires some very minor hex editing, or it will just back up and reinstall those files :O

-MO

Genius · Dec 22, 2002, 01:38 AM

Can someone send me a screenshot and registry export of that mystery key? Thanks.

Genius · Dec 22, 2002, 01:48 AM

Motoki thanks I have updated the guide a bit to reflect some of the things you mentioned. I'm not going to do anything with how ATI recommends you install the WDM drivers though. Either way is correct.

Polock · Dec 24, 2002, 01:30 AM

Here I thought I was a newbie and come to find out I'm also a nOOb. I admit it and am super lucky to have stumbled upon Genius' "Driver Installation Guide for nOObs".

This is the first PC I have tried to do on my own and it has been a challenge, but it's been a riot. I've been reading here for days and finally coming from outta the weeds. Tons of info here, but lack the knowledge to put it together at times.

I have the AIW Radeon 8500DV on a XP Pro Athon machine on a Soyo Dragon Plus and have been having some issues after updating XP Pro for security reasons (so they say). Since that time my display drivers have not been very stable....after boot-up, it runs for about 5-10 minutes and then freezes with a beautiful assortment of patterns and colors.

So I decided to be a nOOb and give the guide a try to replace the drivers. So far I've managed to remove the software and drivers per the instructions, but when I did a search for ati*.* I found a bunch of files with the ati prefix that I'm not sure whether to delete or not. I will list them below in hope I can get a little more assistance for this sub-par nOOb

Here goes:
C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch
C:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386\driver.cab
C:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386\spl.cab
C:\WINDOWS\Service Pack Files\i386 **
C:\WINDOWS\Service Pack Files\i386\spl.cab
C:\WINDOWS\system32 **
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers
C:\WINDOWS\Last Good System\System32\DRIVERS
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ReinstallBackups\0000\Driver Files

** In these 2 folders, all the files are the same. Example: ati2dvaa.dll

As a note, I did let Windows Update install the latest WHQL drivers before I restored to a point before all this. Still has the conflict as I do at this minute (screen just went black).

Another nOOb,

Polock

Genius · Dec 24, 2002, 05:09 PM

If you want to remove the ATI driver files, the only place you need to look is under \Windows\System32 and \Windows\System32\Drivers. Other files can remain, as they don't have any effect. In fact, all the files can remain and you will achieve a clean install just by following the guide. I wouldn't worry about deleting anything.

Polock · Dec 24, 2002, 08:02 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Genius
If you want to remove the ATI driver files, the only place you need to look is under \Windows\System32 and \Windows\System32\Drivers. Other files can remain, as they don't have any effect. In fact, all the files can remain and you will achieve a clean install just by following the guide. I wouldn't worry about deleting anything.

Big time thanks for taking a look at my dilema. I was trying to follow the guide to a T, but this nOOb always panics when something extra shows up.

For awhileI thought the AIW 8500DV would be over my head, and it is. But, this site gives me hope for learnin' something and get my card working. Can't believe all the info in here...

it's hard to decide where to start

Polock

Abisidian · Jan 1, 2003, 09:05 PM

Genius

What can I say but thank you very much for all your time to make this guide. I am indeed a noob and this guide has helped me tremendously. Where I failed before to correct problems stemming from a new driver installation I now succeed. Thanks again

Polock · Jan 2, 2003, 02:40 AM

Please keep that Guide posted for awhile. Here I thought I had driver problems, but after swithing drivers around woth no change,I decided to check for other things.

After plugging my Matrox G400 Max into my XP Pro rig, it ran like a charm for 2 hours without a glitch. Played swith'em all day and every time it came to the ATI 8500DV AIW card or it's digital to analog connector for the monitor.

After I RMA this with NewEgg, I'll be back to try it again.

Maybe the Cat 3.0 will be ready for the 8500DV?

Excellent site and super guide,

Polock

amuro · Jan 6, 2003, 07:28 AM

I have an ATI Fire GL 8800 128MB AGP4X and it works on a P4 Compaq system but I have problems with it in a PIII 1Ghz, Intel VC820 with 256MB of ECC PC600 RDRAM with latest bios updates from Intel and using Win XP Pro SP1 with latest ATI drivers.

The system is able to have the drivers intalled but upon restart the system never finishes booting, after enabling vga mode windows blames the ATI drivers as the problem.

Can you help me?

Genius · Jan 6, 2003, 08:42 AM

Try setting your system bios settings to default and make sure every possible performance enhancing feature is disabled, then see if it will boot. If it does then something is likely too aggressive for the card and you'll want to work through the settings gradually to find out what causes it. I've seen a similar issue when installing a GeForce ti4200 on an Abit AX7 board. I could load VGA mode fine, but once I installed the video drivers Windows XP would hard lock on every boot until I disabled PCI Master Read Caching.

Dec 18, 2002, 05:25 AM	#1
Genius ID10T Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Midland, MI Posts: 146 Rep Power: 0	DRIVER INSTALLATION GUIDE FOR n00bs Updated 12-20-2002 at 6:15PM EST DISCLAIMER WINDOWS XP ONLY I am in no way responsible for any problems you may have by following this guide. Read through it very carefully, and print it off on a color printer if you only have one PC available. This guide will break the ATI Multimedia Center. You will need to reinstall it afterwards. Some of the steps may seem excessive or unecessary, I know this, but they are there to ensure successful uninstallation. Step 1: Disable your Ethernet card, if you have one. This will prevent Microsoft from taking over and installing WHQL drivers from the Windows Update site without your permission. To do this, unplug your Ethernet cable or simply go into your device manager and right click on your Ethernet card and choose Disable. See the following illustration. Your Ethernet card will now have a red X to indicate that it is disabled. Step 2: Uninstall your existing Video card and drivers Method A: Add/Remove Programs. Go into your control panel and choose the Add/Remove Programs icon. If you are currently using an ATI Radeon based card, you should see the following (unless you're using the default Windows XP drivers). Highlight the item you wish to remove and click Change/Remove. Each time you uninstall the ATI Control Panel or Video Drivers, you will be asked if you wish to restart your computer. Click no. If you have another type of video card such as, God forbid, an Nvidia or Matrox adapter, you may have an uninstall program for that as well. It will be up to you to determine what is safe to uninstall. If you don't have an uninstall program for your display adapter, don't worry, we have another method. Method B: Device Manager This method is intended for uninstalling oem adapters, or any adapter without an uninstall program accessible through Add/Remove programs. Go into your Device Manager by right clicking the My Computer icon, and clicking properties on the popup menu. This will take you to a screen similar to this: In this window, click the tab labelled Hardware, then Device Manager, which will take you here: Click the + symbol to the left of Display Adapters and you will see at least one adapter, such as you see above. Right click on the adapter you wish to remove (better remove all of them for this guide to work, otherwise enjoy your unstable system ). You will see a small menu with an option to uninstall. Click it. You will be prompted to authorize the uninstallation, and you obviously click yes to proceed. Afterwards, you will also be prompted to restart your computer for the changes to take effect. Click No. Step 3: INF purge Files with a .inf extension are files that Windows uses to get information as to how your hardware should be installed; which files to copy, registry entries to be created, etc. Each .inf file contains a hardware identifier key that tells Windows Hey, that's me! when installing new hardware. These are what will cause your video card to automatically install itself upon reboot. Microsoft has also added the ability to find your hardware identifier in their own databases on Windows Update as well, allowing Windows to download and install drivers automatically (This is why we disabled your Ethernet adapter in Step 1). Open up an Explorer window (right click My Computer, click Explore). In your Explorer window, browse to C:\Windows\inf and find the following files: Note: If you do not see an inf folder, you need to set the Windows Explorer to show all files. To do this, in the Explorer Window, click Tools, then Folder Options. In the window that pops up, click the View tab. On this page you will see a box labelled Advanced with several check boxes to enable and disable various features. Go to the section labelled Hidden Files and Folders. Tick the radio button in front of Show hidden files and folders and remove the checks from Hide extensions for known file types and Hide protected operating system files (Recommended). Delete them (backing up by copying to another location is recommended). Though not all of these files are related to the ATI Radeon card, I remove them all myself anyways. Deleting these keys will only need to be done once. The files will not be replaced by subsequent installs and only a reinstallation of Windows XP or Service Pack 1. If you already know which ones don't belong, remove only the necessary files. Remember, this is a n00b guide. If you own a different type of video card, such as Nvidia or Matrox, there are specific .inf files for these. For example, nv3.inf or nv4_disp.inf for Nvidia cards. For each .inf file, there will be a corrosponding file with the extension .PNF. Remove (and backup) these as well for consistency. Once you have removed the .inf files corrosponding to your video adapter, we'll move on to the next step. OEMxx.inf files. These are created when you install a device with drivers from the manufacturer. The following image will show you what I mean: You don't want to delete all the files you see here, but the ones we want to delete will vary from system to system. What you will need to do is open each oemxx.inf file and examine the contents to determine if it belongs to your display adapter. For example, in the following image, I open oem7.inf. Notice how the highlighted line says Installation INF for the ATI display driver. This tells me that it belongs to my ATI card (duh!). We can safely delete this file and it's corrosponding .PNF file. Go through all of your oemxx.inf files and remove all pertaining to your video card. Different manufacturers will have telltale signs at the beginning of each file. Use your better judgement as to what should be removed. There may be multiple .inf's and .PNF's for your hardware. Remove them all. Got it? Good. We're getting there. Special Note: If you are using ATI's uninstall program through Add/Remove programs, do not delete the oemxx.inf files until AFTER you have run the uninstall. Doing so will cause the uninstall to return you an error. Follow this guide in order. Update: If you see any .PNF files without a matching oemxx.inf, it was likely removed by ATI uninstallation procedure. This appears to be new to the Catalyst drivers. You can safely remove any unmatched .PNF files. __________________ [color=White]Abit NF7-S v.2.0 1.5gb ram at 10-3-3-2.5 AMB Barton 2500+ @2215MHz (211x10.5) Dual WD800JB (Raid 0) / WD1600JB / WD800BB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Logitech Z-680 5.1 speakers Radeon 9800 Pro Sony G420 19"[/color] Last edited by Genius; Jul 10, 2004 at 02:00 PM.

Dec 18, 2002, 05:26 AM	Thread Starter #2
Genius ID10T Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Midland, MI Posts: 146 Rep Power: 0	Step 4: Reboot your computer, it's time to clean the Windows Registry. Windows will start back up and detect your video card as if new, assuming you've followed instructions properly to this point. If it automatically installs drivers still, you may have missed an .inf file or two. Never fear, let Windows do it's thing, reboot, and start over. Now that Windows is finding your new hardware, it should be prompting you how you wish to go about installing your drivers. Click cancel. The prompt for new hardware installation may pop up more than once, click cancel each time until the funny hardware detection icon no longer appears in the system tray (generally the lower right hand corner of the screen, by the clock). Once we have passed the new hardware installation by cancelling, it's time to dig into the Windows Registry and remove the biggest cause of all problems when installing new video cards or drivers. Open up RegEdit by clicking your Start button, then Run, and typing regedit in the command window. Click OK or hit Enter on your keyboard. Regedit will open and you should see something like this: Browse down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE and click the + sign to the left of Software, you will see one or more keys for your previous display adapter, as seen here for ATI cards: Delete them all. If you are upgrading from another brand of Video card, once again, there may be some information left over from them. While not necessary to remove (shouldn't cause any problems), you can remove anything you know belongs to another manufacturer (i.e. NV... for Nvidia). On to the Next set of registry keys to remove. Browse down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Video\ and click the + sign to the left of Video. You should see something similar to this: Delete all subkeys of video. If Windows happens to return an error (I was unable to reproduce this error for a screenshot) when deleting any of these keys, such as access denied, don't worry, there's an easy solution. Expand the key in question down to it's last entry, and begin deleting the sub-secitons first. See the following illustration. Delete up the chain until you can delete the Video subkey itself (this is safe to remove, but not necessary, it will be recreated during the driver installation). Now browse down to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es registry key. Somewhere under services you should see any services specific to your video card, ATI in this example: Delete the keys Ati HotKey Poller, ATI Smart, ati2mtag, and any other keys with the prefix ATI. If you hadn't notice before you expanded the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet key, there are two keys: ControlSet001 and ControlSet002 (002 may be 003 or another variant of 00x on some systems). The ControlSet001 key is an exact mirror of CurrentControlSet, so if you happen to notice many of the same keys located in these sections, you will know why. When you delete a key from CurrentControlSet or ControlSet001, the changes will be made to the other. The key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002 is a backup key that contains the information required to boot your computer using the Last Known Good configuration, which is an option you can choose by pressing F8 during Windows 2000/XP boot initialization. You can go through this key and perform the steps listed above, but it is absolutely not necessary because it is rewritten every time your computer boots sucessfully. More specific information on these registry keys can be found here if you wish to educate yourself (this is not a bad thing ). On to the final registry key. This one can be dangerous if you're not careful. For the record, this step does not appear to be necessary in the more recent Catalyst drivers as ATI's uninstall procedure seems to remove the proper keys. Anyways, browse up to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}. Expand the key using the + to the left (I'm sure you've figured out this step by now). See here: Delete all subfolder keys that follow the naming convention of 0000, 0001, 0002, etc. If Windows gives you any errors when attempting to delete these keys, use the same method as you used for the Video keys. Delete all subkeys and string values first. Do not delete anything out of the root of {4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}. I did this once and you get a black screen on reboot and you're pretty much screwed. If you happen to muck this key up, you can fix it without a reinstallation of Windows. You'll need this file to fix it. Should you need to use this file, you'll have to load Windows XP in safe mode by pressing F8 during the XP boot initialization. Once in safe mode just double click the file and reply Yes to the prompt. Reboot and you should have video again. Don't let this scare you though, Windows will give you an error if you make an attempt to delete this key. The only way to delete it is to manually delete each string value first. See the following illustration for a better understanding: Close regedit, we're all done here. Reboot your computer. __________________ [color=White]Abit NF7-S v.2.0 1.5gb ram at 10-3-3-2.5 AMB Barton 2500+ @2215MHz (211x10.5) Dual WD800JB (Raid 0) / WD1600JB / WD800BB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Logitech Z-680 5.1 speakers Radeon 9800 Pro Sony G420 19"[/color] Last edited by Genius; Dec 19, 2002 at 08:30 PM.

Dec 18, 2002, 05:27 AM	Thread Starter #3
Genius ID10T Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Midland, MI Posts: 146 Rep Power: 0	Step 5: Driver Installation. There are a few ways of doing this. The easiest and best way is the automatic method using the more recent ATI Catalyst drivers. The new setup does not require any previous driver to be installed, which is very nice. Keeps everything nice and clean. When Windows XP starts up this time, it will start the New Hardware Wizard: *Method A: Automatic installation* When you see this screen, be sure the radio button next to Install the software automatically (Recommended) is ticked and click Next. Then you'll see this: Tick the radio button for No, do not connect to the Internet now and click Next. You will see the following: Check the box next to Don't prompt me again to install this software and click Finish. Repeat aforementioned steps each time Windows prompts you for new hardware. You may be prompted several times, especially for the ATI All-in-Wonder series of cards. Once Windows has finished detecting all new hardware, you may proceed to run ATI's own installation. The latest Catalyst drivers will install fine using this method. Install the Video drivers, reboot, Install the WDM drivers (for All-in-Wonder and ViVo cards), reboot again, and finally, install the ATI Control Panel. Reboot a final time. At this point, you may wish to reinstall the ATI Multimedia Center as well because if you follow this guide, previous installations of MMC should be hosed. No big deal. I would love to include work arounds for this, but it is simply not worth the trouble. During this automatic installation process you may encounter a message: . If so, click Continue Anyway. At this point your video card should be installed properly. If not, look between the monitor and the chair for any problems *Method B: Manual installation (no Smartgart)* To perform the manual installation, tick the radio button next to Install from a list or specific location (Advanced) and click Next. You will now be prompted to choose your search options: Tick the radio button next to Search for the best driver in these locations and check only the box next to Include this location in the search: and then click the Browse button. You will see a small explorer Window: Here you will need to browse to the location on your hard drive that contains the necessary ATI INF files. In this case I have extracted the driver files to the 6218 directory, as you can see in the installation. Then you highlight the 2KXP_INF directory (when you do so, the OK button will change from grey [inactive] to active). You can now click OK. Note: If you cannot find a way to manually install some driver sets that come pre-packaged as an executable, start the auto installation procedure and cancel it after it decompresses into C:\ATI. Cancelling the setup does not delete the directory, at which point you are free to point a manual driver installation to the relevent directory. You will be prompted with a Device selection window such as this: Highlight the adapter that matches your own (you will often see duplicates, choose the first) and click Next. Windows will now begin installing your hardware. If at any time you are prompted with a message stating that The software you are installing for this hardware has not passed Windows Logo testing to verify its compatibility with Windows XP, click the Continue Anyway button. Once installation has been completed, you may be prompted to restart your computer. Click No. If you are prompted to install additional Video devices, You should choose Install the software automatically (Recommended) and click Next. Windows already has the correct identifiers from the first device, and will automatically find all files necessary to enable the rest (i.e. DVI/TV detected as a secondary adapter). If you continue to see additional New Hardware Wizards, your card may be searching for WDM drivers (All-in-Wonder/ViVo cards). At this point I will refer you back to the automatic install procedure, because there is no reason to manually install the WDM drivers. Once you have completed this manual install, reboot your computer. Install WDM drivers if necessary and reboot. Install Control Panel and reboot. You will need to re-enable your Ethernet adapter as well. To do this refer to step one and choose Enable where you previously chose Disable. Note: As some of you will no doubt notice, there are no instructions as to how and what files to physically remove from your hard drive. This was left out because I feel it will only add confusion to the already lengthy process. Any files left over on the hard drive after following this guide properly will be irrelevant. Aside from that, ATI's own installation routine now removes all but a few files, which will be overwritten during the reinstallation anyways. A Note on BIOS settings Kenai over at the Rage3D forums has made an interesting point and I decided it was best to include with the install guide, however unrelated to the actual install process. If you cannot get your card running stable you may want to check the settings in your system's bios. There may be compatibility issues that crop up when enabling or disabling some settings. I have seen this before, most recently when I installed a GeForce ti 4400 in a friend's computer. Windows would hard lock on every boot until I disabled PCI Master Read Caching. Kenai has provided the following bios settings for his Abit KT7e motherboard. This reference may provide some of you with stability issues a good starting point. Fast Gate A20 Option : Enabled Video BIOS shadowing : Disabled Cowpimp over at Rage3D states that he experienced a strange problem that was corrected by enabling BIOS shadowing. When he would try to fast forward or rewind DVDs with shadowing disabled, it would cause the video to get corrupted by green horizontal lines. He got the recommendation from ATI technical support to enable this feature. This is a highly uncommon problem, and may or may not help you. Video BIOS cacheable : Disabled xxxxxx - xxxxxx shadow : All Disabled IDE prefetch mode : Enabled Init Display First : AGP Assign IRQ for VGA : Enabled PCI/VGA palette snoop : Disabled PNP O/S installed : YES or AUTO Video ram cacheable : Disabled System bios cacheable : Disabled Fast Writes : Disabled AGP Transfer rate : Default AGP Bus Turbo Mode: AGP Turbo DISABLED Primary Frame Buffer: VGA Frame Buffer DISABLED AGP Aperture Size: AGP Aperture DEFAULT or 64MB Resource Control - AUTO AGP Bus Mastering - ENABLED Disable any manual configuration of PCI by setting these options to AUTO Play with the various settings to determine what works best for you. Addition for users with OpenGL problems. Having trouble with anything OpenGL (Quake engine games, Counterstrike)? You may want to try another ATI OpenGL driver. Generally, ATI's atioglxx.dll is interchangable between driver revisions. If you're having trouble with any games in particular, it is very easy to revert back to the last one that worked best for you. Step 1: Download whatever driver package you need that you expect to contain your working OpenGL driver. Step 2: Extract atioglxx.dl_ to your Windows Desktop. There are two methods for this. Method 1: The driver package you downloaded might be able to be opened using WinZip or WinRAR. To find out, right click on the file and see if you see a WinZip or WinRAR context menu (for WinZip, you will see Open with WinZip and for WinRAR you will see Open with WinRAR. Click the corrosponding command (if you're using WinACE, you already know wtf your doing so don't cry). The application window will pop up listing the contents of the driver package. Search through until you find atioglxx.dl_ and highlight it, then click Extract or Extract To. The extraction window will pop up. In the right hand pane, click Desktop (it will extract the file to your Desktop -duh). Now in the left hand side of the window, uncheck use folder names (WinZip) or check Do not extract pathnames (WinRAR). Now click the OK button in WinZip or the Extract button in WinRAR. The file should appear on your desktop. Method 2: If the driver package cannot be opened with WinZip or WinRAR (because ATI thinks they are sneaky), just double click the file so the installation procedure begins. It should prompt for an extraction location before the installation actually begins. Just click OK to this. The files will extract and when the installation comes up, just hit cancel. Open up an Explorer window (right click the My Computer icon, left click explore. Browse to C:\ATI\xxxx. Dig through these folders until you find atioglxx.dl_ and right click the file. Left click Copy in the popup menu. Now minimize or close everything you have open and Right Click on an empty secton of your Desktop (no icons). In the popup menu, click Paste. The file should appear on your desktop if you have done everything correctly. Step 3: Expand the file to something useful. Click Start, then left click Run. Type cmd and click OK. A Windows XP command prompt will appear (looks like MS-Dos). At this prompt, type cd desktop and hit Enter on your keyboard. Next type expand atioglxx.dl_ atioglxx.dll and hit enter. You should see a file named atioglxx.dll appear on your Desktop. Good. Now close all open windows. Step 4: Open up another Explorer window (right click My Computer, left click Explore. In the Explorer Window that pops up, browse to C:\Windows\System32. Locate the file atioglxx.dll and rename it to atioglxx.bak. Do this by right clicking on the file and clicking Rename. You will see a blinking cursor on the icon's name. Now that we have backed up atioglxx.dll to prevent any disasters, switch back to your Desktop and right click the file atioglxx.dll. Choose copy in the popup menu. Now switch back to the Explorer window showing C:\Windows\System32\. Click Edit from up under the top meu bar, then choose Paste. Your new OpenGL driver is now in place. __________________ [color=White]Abit NF7-S v.2.0 1.5gb ram at 10-3-3-2.5 AMB Barton 2500+ @2215MHz (211x10.5) Dual WD800JB (Raid 0) / WD1600JB / WD800BB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Logitech Z-680 5.1 speakers Radeon 9800 Pro Sony G420 19"[/color] Last edited by Genius; Mar 13, 2003 at 07:34 PM.

Dec 18, 2002, 07:58 AM	#4
Junk DriverHeaven Addict Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 395 Rep Power: 0	Wow, Genius..you have more time on your hands than I BTW..what's the name of that XP Theme you're using? Is that with WindowBlinds or StyleXP? __________________

Dec 18, 2002, 01:48 PM	Thread Starter #5
Genius ID10T Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Midland, MI Posts: 146 Rep Power: 0	An update for anyone who might suggest this in the future: I have received a few PM's over at Rage3D mentioning the use of RegCleaner for eliminating these registry entries. I chose not to do this to avoid a seperate section RegCleaner alone. I think it would only add to the confusion. I have laid out the registry editing very well (I think) so that even a noob can handle it __________________ [color=White]Abit NF7-S v.2.0 1.5gb ram at 10-3-3-2.5 AMB Barton 2500+ @2215MHz (211x10.5) Dual WD800JB (Raid 0) / WD1600JB / WD800BB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Logitech Z-680 5.1 speakers Radeon 9800 Pro Sony G420 19"[/color]

Dec 18, 2002, 06:09 PM	#6
Zarathustra Elite Bastard Join Date: May 2002 Location: The Confederacy Posts: 841 Rep Power: 0	Damn man that's some nice work! I'll see if I can get this made into a sticky

Dec 18, 2002, 06:13 PM	#7
digitalwanderer Colour Commentator Join Date: May 2002 Location: Highland, IN USA Posts: 5,620 Rep Power: 0	Stickied! Nice job Genius, this will really save us all a lot of typing. Thanks again and good job, you've more than earned a sticky. __________________ WTF is up with the sigs?

Dec 18, 2002, 09:41 PM	#8
shuki DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: in the hidden place Posts: 1,975 Rep Power: 0	Right on!

Dec 18, 2002, 10:05 PM	#9
Stafford DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Toronto Posts: 19 Rep Power: 0	Wouldn't it be nice if ATI would create a Driver Pack that would overwrite or delete the previous Reg entries and Kinda do all the work for you! :P

Dec 18, 2002, 11:44 PM	#11
Zarathustra Elite Bastard Join Date: May 2002 Location: The Confederacy Posts: 841 Rep Power: 0	Damn that's a good point. But still Genius did some fantastic work here

Dec 19, 2002, 12:07 AM	Thread Starter #12
Genius ID10T Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Midland, MI Posts: 146 Rep Power: 0	I think it has something to do with Microsoft and/or WHQL. Microsoft has never removed hardware information from the registry, even if it is a device that requires no drivers other than what they provide. You remove that hard drive you put in temporarily to copy some files, it's ID is stuck in your registry for eternity (like Windows could survive without a reformat ). __________________ [color=White]Abit NF7-S v.2.0 1.5gb ram at 10-3-3-2.5 AMB Barton 2500+ @2215MHz (211x10.5) Dual WD800JB (Raid 0) / WD1600JB / WD800BB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Logitech Z-680 5.1 speakers Radeon 9800 Pro Sony G420 19"[/color]

Dec 19, 2002, 01:58 PM	#14
LeanWolf alpha male Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Skyrim Posts: 5,702 Rep Power: 80 System Specs	I've been using the uninstall instruction from Cyborg's Drivers page and I've noticed some discrepencies.. only one of the four keys under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE - SYSTEM - CurrentControlSet - Control - Video pertains to your ATI card (or maybe 2 of 5 with some cards), why delete the others? what about the same set of Video keys in ControlSet001 and 002? Are they deleted automatically? in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -- SOFTWARE section, there is another ATI key in the Installed Options key. Did you forget it or is it not important? Also, when installing the new drivers, why all that crap with the hardware install wizard (Step 5 Method A)? Can't you just cancel it and then install? /andy __________________

Dec 19, 2002, 08:37 PM	Thread Starter #16
Genius ID10T Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Midland, MI Posts: 146 Rep Power: 0	I have updated the guide with specific information regarding the registry keys ControlSet001 and ControlSet002. Quick answer: CurrentControlSet is the one your computer is currently using. ControlSet001 is the one your computer most recently booted with, and is the current designated boot key. ControlSet002 is the last known good boot, written as a mirror of ControlSet001 when your computer has sucessfully booted. __________________ [color=White]Abit NF7-S v.2.0 1.5gb ram at 10-3-3-2.5 AMB Barton 2500+ @2215MHz (211x10.5) Dual WD800JB (Raid 0) / WD1600JB / WD800BB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Logitech Z-680 5.1 speakers Radeon 9800 Pro Sony G420 19"[/color]

Dec 20, 2002, 11:08 PM	Thread Starter #19
Genius ID10T Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Midland, MI Posts: 146 Rep Power: 0	Hey guys I'm in a bit of a bind. I have consumed 1.2 gb of traffic today alone (so far) through the hosting space my friend has provided me with, I realize it's alot to ask but I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could help out. If I can't get someone to take the images I'll have to take the guide down from here and see what I can work out with Rage3D, assuming they would even host it on their own. Apparently the guide is pretty popular.... who'd have figured __________________ [color=White]Abit NF7-S v.2.0 1.5gb ram at 10-3-3-2.5 AMB Barton 2500+ @2215MHz (211x10.5) Dual WD800JB (Raid 0) / WD1600JB / WD800BB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Logitech Z-680 5.1 speakers Radeon 9800 Pro Sony G420 19"[/color]

Dec 20, 2002, 11:51 PM	#20
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	all in PM genius

Dec 21, 2002, 05:09 PM	#21
Motoki DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 51 Rep Power: 0	I also have the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SOFTWARE>INSTALLED OPTIONS with ATI entries in it and I also have ATI entries under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>CURRENT USER>SOFTWARE. Note that I do have an AIW and also run with MMC installed, which I always uninstall when I am uninstalling the display drivers. I don't reccomend just leaving it be and reinstalling a new version over top of it, but if it works for you then by all means. As for just cancelling out the auto install window, I have always done that every time I've done a new driver install, and believe me when I say I have done this lots and lots and lots of time :O and I never had any problems installing. IMHO, it might be slightly less confusing to the noobs to just hit cancel. Another thing I wanted to mention is ATI reccomends installing the WDMs before the video card driver and without rebooting. I've never noticed much difference though either way. I always still get the pop up window asking me where the files are when I reboot and I always manually point it over to the inf. One annoying thing though is that it will ask for files like ksuser.sys which is already installed in windows (in the windows\system32 directory) but not in the same directory as the rest of the drivers to be installed, so I have to point it to the system32 directory, then back to the driver directory and back again to system32 etc. Only other comments I would make is you really only have to delete the ati inf files once from your hd and then they are gone unless you reformat, so you might want to note that somewhere so people don't go looking for it if they've done this before. The oe inf files will have to be deleted every time though. Also, I personally prefer adding another step inbetween uninstalling and installing the new drivers of rebooting, cancelling out the auto detect and searching for and deleting all files ati. on the C: drive, then rebooting again. I know in theory reinstalling the new drivers should overwrite them, but I could think of cases where it may not. For example if somehow the older driver was mistakenly dated after the newer, windows may view the older one as a more recent version and not install the new one or prompt the user about it, which may confuse someone into thinking the new driver really isn't new and not install it. I've seen this happen before in rare cases and just to be sure for sure I'd rather have all those files off the HD when I install. If course, with XP you also have to disable that bothersome drivercache, which requires some very minor hex editing, or it will just back up and reinstall those files :O -MO Last edited by Motoki; Dec 21, 2002 at 05:20 PM.

Dec 22, 2002, 01:38 AM	Thread Starter #22
Genius ID10T Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Midland, MI Posts: 146 Rep Power: 0	Can someone send me a screenshot and registry export of that mystery key? Thanks. __________________ [color=White]Abit NF7-S v.2.0 1.5gb ram at 10-3-3-2.5 AMB Barton 2500+ @2215MHz (211x10.5) Dual WD800JB (Raid 0) / WD1600JB / WD800BB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Logitech Z-680 5.1 speakers Radeon 9800 Pro Sony G420 19"[/color]

Dec 22, 2002, 01:48 AM	Thread Starter #23
Genius ID10T Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Midland, MI Posts: 146 Rep Power: 0	Motoki thanks I have updated the guide a bit to reflect some of the things you mentioned. I'm not going to do anything with how ATI recommends you install the WDM drivers though. Either way is correct. __________________ [color=White]Abit NF7-S v.2.0 1.5gb ram at 10-3-3-2.5 AMB Barton 2500+ @2215MHz (211x10.5) Dual WD800JB (Raid 0) / WD1600JB / WD800BB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Logitech Z-680 5.1 speakers Radeon 9800 Pro Sony G420 19"[/color]

Dec 24, 2002, 01:30 AM	#24
Polock DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Byron, IL. Posts: 46 Rep Power: 0	Here I thought I was a newbie and come to find out I'm also a nOOb. I admit it and am super lucky to have stumbled upon Genius' "Driver Installation Guide for nOObs". This is the first PC I have tried to do on my own and it has been a challenge, but it's been a riot. I've been reading here for days and finally coming from outta the weeds. Tons of info here, but lack the knowledge to put it together at times. I have the AIW Radeon 8500DV on a XP Pro Athon machine on a Soyo Dragon Plus and have been having some issues after updating XP Pro for security reasons (so they say). Since that time my display drivers have not been very stable....after boot-up, it runs for about 5-10 minutes and then freezes with a beautiful assortment of patterns and colors. So I decided to be a nOOb and give the guide a try to replace the drivers. So far I've managed to remove the software and drivers per the instructions, but when I did a search for ati. I found a bunch of files with the ati prefix that I'm not sure whether to delete or not. I will list them below in hope I can get a little more assistance for this sub-par nOOb Here goes: C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch C:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386\driver.cab C:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386\spl.cab C:\WINDOWS\Service Pack Files\i386 C:\WINDOWS\Service Pack Files\i386\spl.cab C:\WINDOWS\system32 C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers C:\WINDOWS\Last Good System\System32\DRIVERS C:\WINDOWS\system32\ReinstallBackups\0000\Driver Files ** In these 2 folders, all the files are the same. Example: ati2dvaa.dll As a note, I did let Windows Update install the latest WHQL drivers before I restored to a point before all this. Still has the conflict as I do at this minute (screen just went black). Another nOOb, Polock

Dec 24, 2002, 05:09 PM	Thread Starter #25
Genius ID10T Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Midland, MI Posts: 146 Rep Power: 0	If you want to remove the ATI driver files, the only place you need to look is under \Windows\System32 and \Windows\System32\Drivers. Other files can remain, as they don't have any effect. In fact, all the files can remain and you will achieve a clean install just by following the guide. I wouldn't worry about deleting anything. __________________ [color=White]Abit NF7-S v.2.0 1.5gb ram at 10-3-3-2.5 AMB Barton 2500+ @2215MHz (211x10.5) Dual WD800JB (Raid 0) / WD1600JB / WD800BB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Logitech Z-680 5.1 speakers Radeon 9800 Pro Sony G420 19"[/color]

Jan 1, 2003, 09:05 PM	#27
Abisidian DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	Genius What can I say but thank you very much for all your time to make this guide. I am indeed a noob and this guide has helped me tremendously. Where I failed before to correct problems stemming from a new driver installation I now succeed. Thanks again

Jan 2, 2003, 02:40 AM	#28
Polock DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Byron, IL. Posts: 46 Rep Power: 0	Please keep that Guide posted for awhile. Here I thought I had driver problems, but after swithing drivers around woth no change,I decided to check for other things. After plugging my Matrox G400 Max into my XP Pro rig, it ran like a charm for 2 hours without a glitch. Played swith'em all day and every time it came to the ATI 8500DV AIW card or it's digital to analog connector for the monitor. After I RMA this with NewEgg, I'll be back to try it again. Maybe the Cat 3.0 will be ready for the 8500DV? Excellent site and super guide, Polock

Jan 6, 2003, 07:28 AM	#29
amuro DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 147 Rep Power: 0	I have an ATI Fire GL 8800 128MB AGP4X and it works on a P4 Compaq system but I have problems with it in a PIII 1Ghz, Intel VC820 with 256MB of ECC PC600 RDRAM with latest bios updates from Intel and using Win XP Pro SP1 with latest ATI drivers. The system is able to have the drivers intalled but upon restart the system never finishes booting, after enabling vga mode windows blames the ATI drivers as the problem. Can you help me?

Jan 6, 2003, 08:42 AM	Thread Starter #30
Genius ID10T Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Midland, MI Posts: 146 Rep Power: 0	Try setting your system bios settings to default and make sure every possible performance enhancing feature is disabled, then see if it will boot. If it does then something is likely too aggressive for the card and you'll want to work through the settings gradually to find out what causes it. I've seen a similar issue when installing a GeForce ti4200 on an Abit AX7 board. I could load VGA mode fine, but once I installed the video drivers Windows XP would hard lock on every boot until I disabled PCI Master Read Caching. __________________ [color=White]Abit NF7-S v.2.0 1.5gb ram at 10-3-3-2.5 AMB Barton 2500+ @2215MHz (211x10.5) Dual WD800JB (Raid 0) / WD1600JB / WD800BB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Logitech Z-680 5.1 speakers Radeon 9800 Pro Sony G420 19"[/color]