Stupid Damn ATI Drivers!

[Zilog Jones]

OK, I have an ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP card on my crappy old PC. The driver
that came with it (4.11.2612) was a bit screwy as 400x300 resolution would
just cause my monitor to switch off (I have the correct drivers for my
monitor), and some programs would only run at a max. of 85Hz when the
monitor can take 100Hz at those resolutions. So I got the latest driver from
their site (4.13.1.2655) and that fixed the 400x300 resolution problem (and
added a few other resolution modes), but ****ed up everything else! Half the
time the sound driver wouldn't load properly (if at all) and my USB game
controller wouldn't always work, power management wouldn't work AT ALL, and
all the programs that previously used 100Hz at 640x480 (and lower) were now
running at 85Hz, with the programs that used to run at 85Hz now worked at
100Hz! I kept having to restart Windows to get everything to work properly!

Are there any other drivers (for Win98SE) inbetween these two that might
work properly, or is there anything else I can do to solve the problem of
the 400x300 not working and stuff not running at 100Hz, WITHOUT having to
get another graphics card for the POS? www.video-drivers.com wasn't much
help - only had the same two drivers I have. Any unofficial drivers around?

*Sigh*, and to think everything works PERFECTLY on Linux...

Spec. -
m/b: GA-6VX7-4X (VIA Apollo Pro, socket 370, built-in sound)
CPU: Celeron 366/66 (Mendocimo)
RAM: 512MB PC133 crappy brand, 64MB PC100 other crappy brand
Monitor: Belinea 10 20 10 (15")
DirectX 8.1

 

[Wheat Muncher]

Zilog Jones put me in my place by writing

OK, I have an ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP card on my crappy old PC. The
driver that came with it (4.11.2612) was a bit screwy as 400x300
resolution would just cause my monitor to switch off (I have the
correct drivers for my monitor), and some programs would only run at a
max. of 85Hz when the monitor can take 100Hz at those resolutions. So
I got the latest driver from their site (4.13.1.2655) and that fixed
the 400x300 resolution problem (and added a few other resolution
modes), but ****ed up everything else! Half the time the sound driver
wouldn't load properly (if at all) and my USB game controller wouldn't
always work, power management wouldn't work AT ALL, and all the
programs that previously used 100Hz at 640x480 (and lower) were now
running at 85Hz, with the programs that used to run at 85Hz now worked
at 100Hz! I kept having to restart Windows to get everything to work
properly!

Are there any other drivers (for Win98SE) inbetween these two that
might work properly, or is there anything else I can do to solve the
problem of the 400x300 not working and stuff not running at 100Hz,
WITHOUT having to get another graphics card for the POS?
www.video-drivers.com wasn't much help - only had the same two drivers
I have. Any unofficial drivers around?

*Sigh*, and to think everything works PERFECTLY on Linux...

Spec. -
m/b: GA-6VX7-4X (VIA Apollo Pro, socket 370, built-in sound)
CPU: Celeron 366/66 (Mendocimo)
RAM: 512MB PC133 crappy brand, 64MB PC100 other crappy brand
Monitor: Belinea 10 20 10 (15")
DirectX 8.1

One thing I have done to cure goofy, intermittent errors
caused by ATI
drivers is to remove the instances of the ATI software out
of the local
machine run key in the registry. It might not help, but it
is worth a
shot, as I ahve had it cure many goofy, odd ball errors that
have no
other explanation.

--
Wheaty...


Just one moment please...the mother ship is calling me on my
microwave.

 

[Stacey]

Zilog Jones wrote:

*Sigh*, and to think everything works PERFECTLY on Linux...

zep..

First drivers kept crashing in simple 3D apps and couldn't then after a
driver "update"


I'm fighting with an ATI 7500 using it as a dual head card in win2K. First
drivers kept crashing in simple 3D apps and couldn't set second monitor
faster than 60hz. Then after a driver "update" about every 3rd boot the
second monitor has "invalid frequency" error and the main is at 1600X1200
instead of both being at 1024X768@120hz like it is set for. Other times it
works fine. About to toss the card and put in an nvidia so I can deliver
the system.

 

[Alien Zord]

OK, I have an ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP card on my crappy old PC. The driver
that came with it (4.11.2612) was a bit screwy as 400x300 resolution would
just cause my monitor to switch off (I have the correct drivers for my
monitor), and some programs would only run at a max. of 85Hz when the
monitor can take 100Hz at those resolutions. So I got the latest driver from
their site (4.13.1.2655) and that fixed the 400x300 resolution problem (and
added a few other resolution modes), but ****ed up everything else! Half the
time the sound driver wouldn't load properly (if at all) and my USB game
controller wouldn't always work, power management wouldn't work AT ALL, and
all the programs that previously used 100Hz at 640x480 (and lower) were now
running at 85Hz, with the programs that used to run at 85Hz now worked at
100Hz! I kept having to restart Windows to get everything to work properly!

Are there any other drivers (for Win98SE) inbetween these two that might
work properly, or is there anything else I can do to solve the problem of
the 400x300 not working and stuff not running at 100Hz, WITHOUT having to
get another graphics card for the POS? www.video-drivers.com wasn't much
help - only had the same two drivers I have. Any unofficial drivers around?

*Sigh*, and to think everything works PERFECTLY on Linux...

Spec. -
m/b: GA-6VX7-4X (VIA Apollo Pro, socket 370, built-in sound)
CPU: Celeron 366/66 (Mendocimo)
RAM: 512MB PC133 crappy brand, 64MB PC100 other crappy brand
Monitor: Belinea 10 20 10 (15")
DirectX 8.1

There have been loads of problems with Win98, AGP and GART on systems
with more than 512MB of RAM. Firstly I would remove the 64MB stick and
then try different versions of VIA GART.

 

[kony]

That would explain why it doesn't work then. Their latest dirver does, but
as I said it ruins many other things.

Well, however you're getting 400x300, perhaps the others do too, i
don't know... from looking at the latest driver INF file (the one
you've already tried, I don't see official support for 400x300, only
the following:

640,480
720,480
768,576
800,600
848,480
864,480
1024,600
1024,768
1152,864
1280,1024
1600,1200

Umm, I think you missed the last line in my original post:

Oops!


And I require at least 8 to use certain programs, so I can't downgrade
(doesn't seem to let me anyway). I had 9 but I had the same problems. I've
re-installed Windows thinking it might solve these problems (that's how I'm
back down to DirectX 8.1), but it didn't make a difference, which is why I
went back to the old dirvers.


Have you used any of these? I don't suppose you know of any that support
400x300 reolution? I *kinda* need that resolution for playing certain games
on an emulator.

I've used one or two, but don't recall which, and not for 400x300,
probably 1024,786. I never used Rage Pro cards for gaming... have one
lying around somewhere if/when I need a spare for something, since
these days the card has no virtues at all except that it uses very
little power, creates little heat, compared to anything modern.

I had some programs report MMC problems too with the latest driver, but I'm
not quite sure exactly what MMC is thanks to the very 'user-friendly'
architecture of Windows. Any way of fixing the MMC if it needs to be fixed?

MMC features depend on the card, can be only the ATI video player
(maybe more, I forget if anything else) but on the All-In-Wonder cards
the player has more features, is also the front-end application for
the capture, tuner, video desktop, etc. For a non-AIW card there's no
good reason to install the MMC that I know of, it just adds more buggy
ATI software to a system.

Is that related to the power management problem too? When my PC usually goes
into standby, the monitor goes into suspend mode, the CPU fan goes off and
the HDD turns off. With the new ATI driver, when I do that the monitor goes
into its kinda 'no signal' mode, and nothing else happens, and I have to
press a keyboard button AND move the mouse to get out of it (if I can, that
is - sometimes it stayed like that!)... and then the mouse cursor freezes.

Well if all you've changed is the video driver then it seems clearly
the cause, though I've never used the newest driver. I just
downloaded it for the first time when I saw your post, realized
there's a newer version available... with any luck, I'll never use it
;-)


Dave