(ATI MMC 9.06-1) - TV Locks up and can not be killed or closed

[Pam Hayes]

I have a 9600XT AIW it's in a dual Xeon 866 system.

I just updated to CAT 5.4 and mmc 9.06-1.

Now sometimes randomly, sometimes just when trying to close the TV app it
freezes. I can not even kill it from task manager (end task), and I have
to power off the machine manually because Windows can't kill the ATIMMC
process to shut down normally.

I have re-installed the CAT 5.4 drivers several times (even manually
removed everything "ATI" from \system32\drivers and \dllcache.

When I run the little PC test from the MMC configuration panel it crashes
when detecting capture driver.

The TV app worked fine with MMC 8.8 I wonder if I can re-install it and
still use the CAT 5.4 drivers.

Thanks for any input.

 

[Paul Murphy]

I have a 9600XT AIW it's in a dual Xeon 866 system.

I just updated to CAT 5.4 and mmc 9.06-1.

Now sometimes randomly, sometimes just when trying to close the TV app it
freezes. I can not even kill it from task manager (end task), and I have
to power off the machine manually because Windows can't kill the ATIMMC
process to shut down normally.

I have re-installed the CAT 5.4 drivers several times (even manually
removed everything "ATI" from \system32\drivers and \dllcache.

When I run the little PC test from the MMC configuration panel it crashes
when detecting capture driver.

The TV app worked fine with MMC 8.8 I wonder if I can re-install it and
still use the CAT 5.4 drivers.

Thanks for any input.

The newest drivers provide audio through the PCI bus for your sort of card -
I'm unsure if older versions of MMC such as 8.8 will support that. Certainly
for older cards which don't permit installation of those newer WDM capture
drivers with audio via the PCI bus, the latest drivers can be mixed with
older versions of MMC (although there's not much point in doing so). There
aren't many Xeon 866 dual CPU machines around these days, what OS is
installed on it and is the machine set up with only one OS or a multiple
boot environment. If you want to uninstall all traces of ATI drivers and
software, rather than manually deleting files, it would be better to use the
removal tool that ATI provide for download on their website.

MMC and drivers don't like being updated upon themselves, its best to fully
uninstall the MMC and then drivers/software using add/remove programs,
reboot and only then install the newer drivers, reboot and only then begin
with MMCs prerequisites and MMC. If this isn't done exactly according to
ATIs installation instructions and in the correct order there WILL be
problems.

Paul

 

[JG]

I have a 9600XT AIW it's in a dual Xeon 866 system.

I just updated to CAT 5.4 and mmc 9.06-1.

Now sometimes randomly, sometimes just when trying to close the TV app it
freezes. I can not even kill it from task manager (end task), and I have
to power off the machine manually because Windows can't kill the ATIMMC
process to shut down normally.

I have re-installed the CAT 5.4 drivers several times (even manually
removed everything "ATI" from \system32\drivers and \dllcache.

When I run the little PC test from the MMC configuration panel it crashes
when detecting capture driver.

The TV app worked fine with MMC 8.8 I wonder if I can re-install it and
still use the CAT 5.4 drivers.

Thanks for any input.

Interestingly enough, on my Tyan Opteron Dually, the exact same thing
happens. Going back to 9.06 fixed the lockup. However, 9.06 takes
about 2 minutes to start on my machine for some reason...

 

[Pam Hayes]

There aren't many Xeon 866 dual CPU machines around these days, what OS
is installed on it and is the machine set up with only one OS or a
multiple boot environment. If you want to uninstall all traces of ATI
drivers and software, rather than manually deleting files, it would be
better to use the removal tool that ATI provide for download on their
website.

I don't think there were ever many of these machines around, the reason I
mention it is because I saw some problems related to SMP and also Hyper
Threading on ATI website.

I am running XP SP2 alone, no other OS.

I can not understand what is making the PC Check utility crash, I think it
must be related. Anyway, I can't stomach re-installing Windows and I'm
about totally fed up with re-installing MMC and the drivers. I would
really like to find some reasonable way to locate the conflict. It is
probably something simple, such as registering or unregistering some
module.

If I find a solution I will post it even though it appears that I am alone
with this problem.

Thanks

 

[Gary Drescher]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 19:03:00 +0100, Paul Murphy wrote:
Anyway, I can't stomach re-installing Windows and I'm
about totally fed up with re-installing MMC and the drivers.

I reached the same point last week. I uninstalled my ATI TV application
(All-in-wonder 9800 Pro) and got a Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150. My PC no longer
crashes, my TV app no longer crashes, the product works properly, and when I
had minor problems, their tech support promptly and helpfully responded to
my email (in contrast with ATI's tech support, which I've never been able to
get a reply from).

--Gary

 

[Paul Murphy]

I don't think there were ever many of these machines around, the reason I
mention it is because I saw some problems related to SMP and also Hyper
Threading on ATI website.

I am running XP SP2 alone, no other OS.

I can not understand what is making the PC Check utility crash, I think it
must be related. Anyway, I can't stomach re-installing Windows and I'm
about totally fed up with re-installing MMC and the drivers. I would
really like to find some reasonable way to locate the conflict. It is
probably something simple, such as registering or unregistering some
module.

If I find a solution I will post it even though it appears that I am alone
with this problem.

Thanks

FWIW I don't think this is an issue with SMP that's causing the lockup
because I have run MMC 9.06.1 (currently using 9.02) on my dual Athlon
MP1600+ machine and there were no signs of lockups or instability. In my
years of experience with ATI's drivers and MMC, the most common causes of
bugs/crashing I've seen comes down to installing versions over the top of
other versions (rather than doing a full uninstall first) or performing
installations with other things running in the background. Although the
software installation process is quite modular and involved, as longs as its
done on a stable OS with all chipset drivers etc correctly installed, I've
never had issues such as your experiencing.

There were know issues with Hyperthreading CPUs (prior to XP SP2 I believe)
but these didn't apply to dual CPUs - presumably because Hyperthreading
isn't two complete CPUs in one, there's only partial duplication. I suggest
that you start by having a nosey in dxdiag and see what's going on re the
display tab there (enter dxdiag into the run box to start this). I don't
want to get ahead of myself but if that shows everything up as enabled and
working properly (and DMA is enabled for all your IDE controllers in device
manager/there are no device manager errors), sometimes the quickest solution
in the long run is to do a full reinstall on a freshly recreated partition.
I have seen the PC Check utility provide many false readings in the past but
never a crash. Does event viewer or the crash message itself give any clues?

Paul

 

[Pam Hayes]

FWIW I don't think this is an issue with SMP that's causing the lockup
because I have run MMC 9.06.1 (currently using 9.02) on my dual Athlon
MP1600+ machine and there were no signs of lockups or instability. In my
years of experience with ATI's drivers and MMC, the most common causes
of bugs/crashing I've seen comes down to installing versions over the
top of other versions (rather than doing a full uninstall first) or
performing installations with other things running in the background.
Although the software installation process is quite modular and
involved, as longs as its done on a stable OS with all chipset drivers
etc correctly installed, I've never had issues such as your
experiencing.

There were know issues with Hyperthreading CPUs (prior to XP SP2 I
believe) but these didn't apply to dual CPUs - presumably because
Hyperthreading isn't two complete CPUs in one, there's only partial
duplication. I suggest that you start by having a nosey in dxdiag and
see what's going on re the display tab there (enter dxdiag into the run
box to start this). I don't want to get ahead of myself but if that
shows everything up as enabled and working properly (and DMA is enabled
for all your IDE controllers in device manager/there are no device
manager errors), sometimes the quickest solution in the long run is to
do a full reinstall on a freshly recreated partition. I have seen the PC
Check utility provide many false readings in the past but never a crash.
Does event viewer or the crash message itself give any clues?

Paul

Thanks for all your input.

I have finally decided that the problem may be related to the system's
on-board sound "SoundMAX". After a few more tries with different
combinations of drivers and mmc I finally just re-installed everything
from the original CD and it is working. I think it is a Digital vs
Analog sound issue but I don't know, I re-installed so many times it gets
hard to keep track of all the changes. In the whole time I've owned this
PC I don't think it has been rebooted as many times as in the last few
days of installing and removing ATI software. I do know that it was all a
totally huge waste of time, that I could have been spared, and I will
certainly be thinking twice before looking at ATI for video solutions in
the future. Video is too important to depend on such a temperamental
arrangement of installation software --It may be alright for a Graphics
card alone but compounded by the TV tuner being on the same board it can
be a nightmare.

-P

 

[James Huckabey]

Try removing SP2 and see what happens, it impacts my AIW 9700 Pro and can't
use the update.

 

[QV]

I have a 9600XT AIW it's in a dual Xeon 866 system.

I just updated to CAT 5.4 and mmc 9.06-1.

Now sometimes randomly, sometimes just when trying to close the TV app it
freezes. I can not even kill it from task manager (end task), and I have
to power off the machine manually because Windows can't kill the ATIMMC
process to shut down normally.

I have re-installed the CAT 5.4 drivers several times (even manually
removed everything "ATI" from \system32\drivers and \dllcache.

When I run the little PC test from the MMC configuration panel it crashes
when detecting capture driver.

The TV app worked fine with MMC 8.8 I wonder if I can re-install it and
still use the CAT 5.4 drivers.

Thanks for any input.

I had the same exact behavior when I installed MMC 9.06.1 without
uninstalling 9.01 first.

To fix it, I uninstalled 9.06.1, reinstalled 9.01, uninstalled 9.01 and
finally reinstalled 9.06.1 and it works fine now.