cannot install ATI 9600 display driver

[Vince]

Hi, all:

I upgraded a Win98se to XP. Before upgrading, I uninstalled ATI-9600XT
driver, deleted its folder, but I forgot to delete its inf file under INF
folder. The upgrading was fine but when XP bootup, it found the inf and set
the card as Ati 9600, then my plight began: I could not install Ati because
it needs a standard VGA driver. I tried to search and delete all the inf
files related to ATI, uninstalled the device from device manager, tried
regcleaner JV16 to remove all Ati entries..., everything looks ok.
After reboot XP, Xp found new hardware, looked promising. I canceled new
hardware wizard, go to device manager, found there are two entries: Video
controller, Video controller (VGA compatible), then install ATI driver, But
I still failed with the same complain: "change the driver back to VGA". I
repeated above steps for more than three time, all resulted the same. I
tried boot into safe mode, XP said "no card installed", tried boot into VGA
mode, driver install failed also. The ATI installer comes with a
uninstaller, but it detected nothing to uninstall, then how it detected the
card is not using VGA driver? Is there something wrong within the registry?
Windows XP's hardware wizard does not allow me to set the card using VGA
driver, it insists searching for driver then failed with yellow marks on
those two entries. I know if the driver can be installed, the markers will
disappear, but how can I get the driver installed?

Thanks for any help.

Vince.

 

[Fitz]

Try this link to the ATI site for there cat-uninstaller and smartgart
uninstaller. They are supposed to completely remove drivers and registry
entries. Then go to regedit, go to Edit>Find (type ATI) and delete keys
associated with ATI (F3 key after each deletion will search for the next
entry). Back up the registry first.

Link: http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/misc/catalystutils.html

Fitz

 

[Vince]

Thanks Fitz:
The utils help me partially, at least, it created a clean environment for
further trouble shooting. Finally, it proved to be a resource conflict. An
on-board sound driver was not installed, together with the ATI card,
occupied the IRQ 10 before IRQ re-directing, which prevented ATI from
getting the IRQ. After I installed audio driver, the IRQ 10 is free and ATI
took it before driver installation, then the installation went on with no
complaint. It sounds strange: some card needs to be installed first, some
others needs to be installed last.

Thanks again for your help.

Vince.

 

[peter]

By deleting every "ATI" inf file you also deleted XP plain vanilla ATI driver
information.Now It has no idea what its seeing when it looks at your ATI video
card.I suggest you run ScanNow
SCANNOW

If you have an XP disk you can do a scan for missing
files. Put the disk in your driver and wait for the
autoplay to do it's thing. Now click exit on the
selections screen and leave the disk in.
click>start\run\and type in cmd and hit enter or click ok.
Now the command screen comes up and you type in
SFC /scannow and hit enter. This should scan for any
missing files or dll's that windows XP needs and put them
back in their Microsoft specs.
Hopefully this will rebuild those >inf files.
Then reboot and see what happens.
peter