I'd forgotten what a PITA ATI drivers can be

[Andrew MacPherson]

I picked up a cheap 6600GT this week. I prefer ATI these days, but a
bargain's a bargain. Tested it in my "disposable" box (with a Voodoo5
in) and it worked fine. Just put the card in, installed the drivers
after boot, and off it went.

So I then removed the 9800se from this box, put the 6600GT in here,
rebooted, installed the nvidia drivers, and... no problems whatsoever.

On the other box I now put the 9800se in after cleaning out as much as I
could find of the previous drivers, and... hours of endless fun, & I've
still not cracked it.

OK, I can reformat that box without losing any sleep, but it reminds me
of a previous "ATI after Nvidia" swap, and things haven't improved!

Andrew "minor rant" McP

 

[BD]

On the other box I now put the 9800se in after cleaning out as much as I
could find of the previous drivers, and... hours of endless fun, & I've
still not cracked it.

Last time I ran in drivers, the process was:

-grabbed the download
-extracted the download
-uninstalled the drivers as per ATI's web page (usually uninstalling
the ATI Add/Remove utility is what they want)
-reboot
-point to the new driver when the OS redetects the hardware
-Dat's It.

So... no offense, but it *aint* just the drivers. If it were *just* the
drivers, everybody'd have the same problem. It's the drivers combined
with the current state of your machine.

Consider blasting your OS and reinstalling. Then consider capturing a
clean install as a Ghost image or something once all drivers and
patches and apps are in place. It'll save you many hours of
reinstalling, if your machine gets into an uncooperative state like
this. Just make sure all recent data is cleared off C:, and reapply
that vanilla image. A few updates to take care of the delta between
image time and current day, and you're golden.

 

[Andrew MacPherson]

So... no offense, but it *aint* just the drivers.

Ok, I know what you mean. But the only other time I've put an ATI card
into a machine after an Nvidia card I had the same reboot-dance. Nvidia
cards/software seem much happier replacing what was there before. Either
that or they're nasty and leave behind traps for what follows?

However I admit there's no such thing as certainty in matters like this.
Fortunately the machine in question is a spare parts "sacrificial lamb"
which I don't need to have working, and I did know I was taking a risk
not backing everything up first.

Andrew McP

 

[BD]

Ok, I know what you mean. But the only other time I've put an ATI card
into a machine after an Nvidia card I had the same reboot-dance. Nvidia
cards/software seem much happier replacing what was there before. Either
that or they're nasty and leave behind traps for what follows?

Wouldn't surprise me at all.