Graphics and Audio problem

[Guest]

I bought Fable and Dragonshard yesterday. Both installed fine but I had
trouble with Dragonshard crashing. So I did all the usual stuff, including
updating all the drivers.

Fable worked fine, before I updated the drivers, but after updating my
Radeon 9600 driver, the game now crashes when changing zones or when an npc
starts a dialogue. I would roll back but during my fiddling with drivers and
system restores to make Dragonshard work, lost my earlier restore point with
the older video driver.

I did manage to get Dragonshard to work. When running the check for new
drivers thing in the Windows audio devices screen, my SiS 7012 became an
AC97. I've lost all sound. I tried uninstalling the AC97 and installing the
updated SiS7012 driver but the installer just closes (without an error
message) during installation. I tried installing the AC97 driver but it tells
me I don't have that hardware. When I uninstall the driver and get Windows to
check for uninstalled hardware, it points to an AC97 audio chip.

I've found a lot of people who've had similar problems, but the solutions
that seem to have worked for them with SiS7012/AC97 driver haven't worked for
me.

Besides throwing it all in and running down to the beach for a swim, and
advice on what else I can try?

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Never get the drivers from Microsoft's WindowsUpdate web site. Always get
them from the manufacturer.

When you updated the Radeon drivers, did you un-install the older version
first? You may have to also have done a complete scrub removal of the older
Radeon drivers. Head over www.guru3d.com for tips and utilities which will
clear out all the left-over files that might cause you problem.

 

[Guest]

Cheers - I solved the audio problem and was about to have another go at the
video driver. I got the radeon drivers direct from the ati website and
according to the sys restore log (when I had it), it uninstalled the old
drivers first, but that's something worth checking.

The audio problem was winxp incorrectly identifying my SiS7012 as an AC97,
then some bug with the AC97 driver not properly uninstalling. After verifying
which chip I have, I tracked down the leftovers of the AC97 driver, removed
them, and then the SiS7012 driver installed properly and I got my sound back.

Dragonshard is working now, so now I just have to sort out Fable.

 

[Guest]

Mmm, didn't do any good. I uninstalled, downloaded and ran Drive Clearer Pro
and reinstalled the driver and the problem has changed a bit - instead of the
screen just going black, sometimes it still does that, but now it also
sometimes just fragments the screen into a jumble of colours and sometimes
halves the screen down the middle and tries to squish the graphics.

Oldest catalyst I've been able to find is 5.8 and that seems a bit more
stable but is still crashing.

The catalyst control centre is popping up error messages and asking to send
reports to ATI, but the email reports keep bouncing.

Something definitely screwy going on - I'll wait to see what ATI have to say.