Sapphire 8500LE and W2K

[Mike]

Just installed a Sapphire Radeon 8500LE from Newegg, and all seemed well
using the Catalyst drivers (3.2 i believe) supplied on the CDROM.
I did a custom install and installed everything except ATI Multimedia stuff
and a couple other extras.
I did allow it to update to DX9 unknowingly i might add.
The system is running W2K Pro and was running an GeForce2 MX400, which was
uninstalled via the device manager.
After running a few apps all seemed fine, went to the Live365 siteand
downloaded its player plugin for I.E.
After allowing the install of this player, it played a couple songs fine,
and it wasn't until i switched stations, that it froze up.
Rebooted, and it took forever to start, and then i started having problems
with lockups and garbled text while doing other tasks.


Uninstalled all ATI apps via control panel, and downloaded latest drivers
from Sapphires site Cat 3.6 (Ver 7.91).
So far so good, but only ran it a short time before leaving there to come
home.
PC was locked up when he checked it this morning. He rebooted and its been
OK for the last few hours.
How stable are the Sapphire drivers? Any recommendations on Official ATI
drivers?
I tried having him install the W2K drivers from ATI's website, and the
installer said he had the wrong version of DX installed.
These were older Catalyst drivers from here:
http://www.ati.com/support/products...n2kdrivers.html

Wondering what the problem most likely was. Live365 Player, DX 9, or the
Catalyst drivers from the Sapphire CD.
Anyone else running this card from Newegg on W2K Pro?
If so what drivers do you recommend, and what version of DX?

I have heard a few nightmares about DX 9, and wanted to see what people here
thought about that. He uses this PC for business apps, browsing and email.
(no games)
Any good way of uninstalling DX9?

 

[Mike]

Thanks for the bad news Tony.
Have you ever tried any of the DX9 removal utilities?

 

[Tony Low]

no, although I know that there is such an utilities; I just dont want to go
through the trouble.

 

[patrickp]

Just installed a Sapphire Radeon 8500LE from Newegg, and all seemed well
using the Catalyst drivers (3.2 i believe) supplied on the CDROM.
I did a custom install and installed everything except ATI Multimedia stuff
and a couple other extras.
I did allow it to update to DX9 unknowingly i might add.
The system is running W2K Pro and was running an GeForce2 MX400, which was
uninstalled via the device manager.
After running a few apps all seemed fine, went to the Live365 siteand
downloaded its player plugin for I.E.
After allowing the install of this player, it played a couple songs fine,
and it wasn't until i switched stations, that it froze up.
Rebooted, and it took forever to start, and then i started having problems
with lockups and garbled text while doing other tasks.


Uninstalled all ATI apps via control panel, and downloaded latest drivers
from Sapphires site Cat 3.6 (Ver 7.91).
So far so good, but only ran it a short time before leaving there to come
home.
PC was locked up when he checked it this morning. He rebooted and its been
OK for the last few hours.
How stable are the Sapphire drivers? Any recommendations on Official ATI
drivers?
I tried having him install the W2K drivers from ATI's website, and the
installer said he had the wrong version of DX installed.
These were older Catalyst drivers from here:
http://www.ati.com/support/products...n2kdrivers.html

Wondering what the problem most likely was. Live365 Player, DX 9, or the
Catalyst drivers from the Sapphire CD.
Anyone else running this card from Newegg on W2K Pro?
If so what drivers do you recommend, and what version of DX?

I have heard a few nightmares about DX 9, and wanted to see what people here
thought about that. He uses this PC for business apps, browsing and email.
(no games)
Any good way of uninstalling DX9?

Since your problems started after you installed the plugin for Live365, I'd
have to say that's the most likely culprit.

However, you also mention having previously had an NVidia card on your
system - ATi and NVidia, to name but a few, both have very inadequate
uninstall routines, which means if you've only uninstalled and not cleared
out the old NVidia files and registry entries, you still have that stuff on
your machine. This is known to cause problems when switching from NVidia to
ATi, and probably vice-versa as well.

I believe there are apps for removing NVidia files/registry entries from
your system. Failing that, you need to edit your registry - there are some
good apps for this around; I've always used jv16 Power Tools, but they've
just gone commercial. You might well be able to find an older freeware
version with a google. The last freeware version was 1.3. You'll then need
to go through your Windows folder and delete all NVidia files.

HTH patrickp