Radeon Drivers

[Essence_of_War]

I have a somewhat embarrassing question about radeon drivers.

Wth my new build, I initially installed the drivers from the CD that came w/ my GPU, a sapphire 7870.

Once I got my data migrated over, all of my applications back-up and running, and drive images crafted, I decided I should update my drivers, I downloaded Catalyst, it ran, failed to update my drivers, and destroyed/corrupted my existing drivers.

I'm a little leery of turning an automated drive cleaner loose on my registry, so I followed the advice here to remove all of the existing drivers/botched installation stuff, and I tried to install catalyst again to update the drivers from a clean slate. Unfortunately, it seemed to fail again.

What's the best way to proceed from here? It doesn't take much effort to go through the "by-hand" cleaning, so I'll certainly do that again. But after that, should I install the driver from the cd, or try to update online? The driver from the cd that came with the gpu seemed to work fine, did I do something wrong by trying to update through Catalyst?

I've been a little out of the PC gaming loop for a while, is this bugginess typical for driver updates?

 

[Kenmitch]

Not sure what went wrong? It's most likely best to just go with the latest drivers.

You need to do the .NET update before you install the latest drivers.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17851

From AMD's website

AMD Catalyst Control Center requires Microsoft .NET4 Framework. Windows Vista and Windows 7 users may need to install the Microsoft .NET4 Framework as a prerequisite to use Catalyst Control Center.

Not sure if you did or didn't do the .NET update first?

 

[Essence_of_War]

Hmmmm...unless Catalyst did it as part of its installation, I'm pretty sure that I didn't do a .net update. From the quote from AMD's website it sounds like that's the piece I'm missing.

So the plan is to clean-up with the procedure I linked to above, do the .net update, THEN download/install/run Catalyst?

 

[Kenmitch]

Yes. Clean the system out again if you like > install .NET update > install drivers and you should be good do go.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Great! I'll check back in after I've done so. Hopefully, I'll be in business by tonight!

 

[Essence_of_War]

At risk of making myself look stupid again, I just need the latest .net framework, right? Like, the one on the front page here?

http://www.microsoft.com/net

 

[JohnnyChuttz]

I had a similar problem and found it was due to an Ati Radeon Graphics Driver in Windows Update. Uninstall any AMD/ATI Radeon updates and try again.

 

[Kenmitch]

At risk of making myself look stupid again, I just need the latest .net framework, right? Like, the one on the front page here?

http://www.microsoft.com/net

Not sure. The one I linked was from AMD driver page.

 

[MeldarthX]

hehe I've had the same thing happened on an older machine I was working on; yea it needs latest .net to run properly......link from AMD's page should be the latest one... Good Luck

 

[Essence_of_War]

So it looks like the display driver installation failed again.

I installed the .net framework directly from AMD's link.
Then I followed the overclock directions to remove all trace of AMD/ATI stuff.

I downloaded the catalyst software suite from here:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonaiw_vista64.aspx

I extracted/installed it.
Ran in express install mode.

The report came back w/:

AMD Catalyst Install Manager
Final Status: Success
Version of Item: 8.0.903.0
Size: 20 Mbytes

AMD APP SDK Runtime
Final Status: Success
Version of Item: 10.0.1084.4
Size: 90 Mbytes

AMD Display Driver
Final Status: Fail
Version of Item: 9.012.0.0000
Size: 90 Mbytes

HDMI Audio Driver
Final Status: Success
Version of Item: 7.12.0.7712
Size: 1 Mbytes

AMD Accelerated Video Transcoding
Final Status: Success
Version of Item: 12.5.100.21219
Size: 3 Mbytes

AMD Drag and Drop Transcoding
Final Status: Success
Version of Item: 2.00.0000
Size: 1 Mbytes

AMD Media Foundation Transcoders
Final Status: Success
Version of Item: 1.0.71219.1540
Size: 1 Mbytes

Catalyst Control Center
Final Status: Success
Version of Item: 2012.1219.1521.27485
Size: 150 Mbytes

Other detected devices


Manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Device ID 0xaaa0
Vendor ID 0x1002
Class Code 0x040300
Revision ID 0x00
Subsystem ID 0xaaa0
Subsystem vendor ID 0x174b


Error messages
Driver Install: the installation failed

Is there something else that I could have missed or done wrong? I'm a bit puzzled now.

 

[Kenmitch]

Maybe the procedure you used?

Use AMD driver install to remove all AMD stuff.
Then do the cleaning if you feel it's needed.
Then .NET update and install the drivers again.

If that doesn't work Google for show non-present devices follow the instructions and see if you have multiple AMD stuff in sound and graphic card sections. Guess maybe check this before the .NET update and driver install.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Hmmmm....so you think maybe that the cleaning/uninstall of CCC did something funny to the .NET installation?

That seems sort of odd, but I guess I could try it.

I was thinking about trying to install the CD drivers just as a sanity check.

 

[andylau09]

Hmmmm....so you think maybe that the cleaning/uninstall of CCC did something funny to the .NET installation?

That seems sort of odd, but I guess I could try it.

I was thinking about trying to install the CD drivers just as a sanity check.

Agree with that. Always do a clean install of CCC, it is pain in the a$$, but it is better to do so.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Ok. I cleaned all of the failed-installer-shrapnel off again, and went back to the CD drivers.

Install worked like a charm.

I'm now thoroughly confused, but at least my GPU is usable

I suppose it isn't 100% necessary to get the latest drivers, but it would be nice to know what the hell is going on during that display driver installation that causes it to fail...

 

[MeldarthX]

Windows hasn't updated the driver cause that has been known to screw things up when trying to install a new driver

but also let it set for a few days and catalyst should say you need to update and give you the link to dl and install; which should install fine

 

[Stuka87]

It just needs to be .NET4 or higher, so 4.5 will work as well.

This should have been installed by windows updates already, as it is an update that is pushed out to all machines. Well, the client profile version is, which is all most things need.

 

[tarmc]

have had simular issues, but usually installing all of the .net framework fixes it

 

[3DVagabond]

As counter intuitive as it may seem, never install the drivers on the CD. They should have warnings all over them telling people to DL the latest drivers from AMD. The only point of them is if someone doesn't have a suitable internet connection for DL'ing the latest drivers.

 

[FalseChristian]

The best bet for you would be to reinstall Windows and try again. I know this is a pain but I've had to do it a few times over the years. And throw that CD out!

 

[Essence_of_War]

Re-installing windows seems like the nuclear option here, I think I'd rather try a few other things first.

I think I may have dl'd the wrong .net framework. It looks like Microsoft is up to 4.5, but the link I went to got only 4.0.

Can it really be that bad to install GPU drivers from a CD? I mean, I'm sure they don't optimize performance, but surely they can't actively be harmful, right?

 

[Kenmitch]

Reading your original post again you state you made a drive image with working drivers off of the CD. Correct?

Have you tried searching device manager for non present devices like I suggested earlier? I had to do this a couple of times in the past when I had driver issues flashing my HD 5850 from bios to bios which messed up my drivers and wouldn't let me install them again. Works sometimes but then other times it takes a windows install to correct the issues.

Start menu > Type cmd in search box > right click (cmd in results) run as admin > set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 (hit enter) > start devmgmt.msc (hit enter) > hit the show hidden devices under the view menu once device manager pops up.

You'll need to look under display adapters and sound for AMD devices. If there are multiples they'll be greyed out. All you need to do is right click them and choose the uninstall option.

For the record are you trying to install the 13.1's or the beta drivers?

 

[Essence_of_War]

I have a drive image of a working state with drivers from Sapphire's CD that game with the GPU. I also have a recent system restore point with the same drivers working.

I've been trying to install the 13.1's but a friend told me that with the same gpu he was able to install and work with the beta drivers, but not the 13.1 drivers. So I think I'll try that next?

I haven't checked the non-present devices yet.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Ok. The issue appears to be resolved.

The fix was to install the latest beta drivers (CCC 13.3). Everything appears to be working fine now.

I'm pleased, but a little puzzled :hmm:

 

[Kenmitch]

Ok. The issue appears to be resolved.

The fix was to install the latest beta drivers (CCC 13.3). Everything appears to be working fine now.

I'm pleased, but a little puzzled :hmm:

Very strange but one of those I guess it doesn't matter in the end situations. The latest beta drivers seem to be working fine for me. I don't really see any drawback with beta drivers....After all we've been beta testing for Microsoft for decades