TV player won't work after installation of new ATI drivers

[Guest]

I have an ATI X1900 All-In-Wonder card purchased last December. It
has been working fine (XP, SP2, all updates, new Duo-Core machine,
etc.).

This morning I decided to update the drivers when driveragent noted
that new drivers were available. I downloaded the drivers, dutifully
uninstalled everything from ATI, deleted the ATI folder and installed
the new drivers in order (all of them) as exactly as directed on the
ADM/ATI site rebooting when directed.

Now the TV player won't work. I get a TV Player failed to initialize
message box. I even tried uninstalling and reinstalling a second
time--same thing!

DirectX 9c is installed--in any case, things were woking with the old
drivers.

Any ideas???

 

[HEMI-Powered]

(e-mail address removed) added these comments in the current
discussion du jour ...

I have an ATI X1900 All-In-Wonder card purchased last
December. It has been working fine (XP, SP2, all updates, new
Duo-Core machine, etc.).

This morning I decided to update the drivers when driveragent
noted that new drivers were available. I downloaded the
drivers, dutifully uninstalled everything from ATI, deleted
the ATI folder and installed the new drivers in order (all of
them) as exactly as directed on the ADM/ATI site rebooting
when directed.

Now the TV player won't work. I get a TV Player failed to
initialize message box. I even tried uninstalling and
reinstalling a second time--same thing!

DirectX 9c is installed--in any case, things were woking with
the old drivers.

Any ideas???

Yes, roll your system back using a Restore Point before the new
driver(s) et al were installed. I assume you created a RP first.

Also, just some advice, don't try to fix things unless you KNOW
they are broken and that the fix actually fixes the problem you
have without creating any new ones. Besides MS critical updates,
the 2nd most common reason for a PC to suddenly stop working
properly to some degree or even completely is an errant video
driver. Hence if your ATI card is working - mine is a Radeon - do
NOT attempt to "fix" it! There are updated drivers for my card,
for Vista for one thing, I believe, but since mine appears to
work fine, colors are correct, performance is very good, no
crashes or other problems, I have no intention of updating it.

Good luck, and never give Murphy an even break! <grin>

 

[Henry Bemis]

I recommend you not upgrade drivers for any 'working' ATI product.

It is never a good experience.

I eventually uninstalled the whole ATI drivers and now only use the Video
drivers. For TV I use a Hauppage card now.

I went thru two years of driver hell with my All in Wonder. And yes, I followed
directions to a T.

If you can restore to a previous point, do so now.

< This morning I decided to update the drivers when driveragent noted

 

[HEMI-Powered]

Henry Bemis added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...

I recommend you not upgrade drivers for any 'working' ATI
product.

It is never a good experience.

I eventually uninstalled the whole ATI drivers and now only
use the Video drivers. For TV I use a Hauppage card now.

I went thru two years of driver hell with my All in Wonder.
And yes, I followed directions to a T.

If you can restore to a previous point, do so now.

I said the very same thing, Henry. The one big thing in the OP's
favor is that he at least has a more reliable ATI card. Problems
with upgraded nVidia drivers literally destroying Windows
requiring a nuke and reinstall are common. Even if they don't
kill Windows they are a major PITA to fix. As to the All In One,
I looked at that when I had my current PC built but decided I was
never going to watch TV in my office, so I passed in favor of the
simpler but far more reliable Radeon. Have had a lick of trouble
yet with the original driver.

 

[Guest]

Right you both are--and just when I thought AMD/ATI was finally
getting its act together on XP drivers (leaving aside the fact that
they've sold those of us who bought a recent AIW down the river on
Vista support!). I've actually had pretty good luck lately with their
drivers--until yesterday's nightmare.

I finally restored the XP partition from a ten-day-old ghost image.
All I really had to do then was reinstall three applications I had
installed since and all was well again.

Of course, I still wonder what is going on. My hypothesis is that
they've got stuff hard-coded in their installation software that
requires access to a "C" drive (they admit it for one of their recent
cards but the registry entries are different for mine and I couldn't
find anything that looked like a registry entry looking for access to
the "C" drive (which, being the Vista partition, is hidden when I'm in
XP using EasyBCD and NeoGrub).

I'm now back to my former dread of ATI driver installation and won't
soon be trying to fix anything connected with my new x1900 that isn't
"broken!"

Thanks for the responses in any case.

Thank God for Ghost!!!

 

[HEMI-Powered]

(e-mail address removed) added these comments in the current
discussion du jour ...

Right you both are--and just when I thought AMD/ATI was
finally getting its act together on XP drivers (leaving aside
the fact that they've sold those of us who bought a recent AIW
down the river on Vista support!). I've actually had pretty
good luck lately with their drivers--until yesterday's
nightmare.

Actually, yours is the first I've heard of an ATI driver bringing
down a system even minorly. Maybe it is the added complexity of
your All-In-One card, since what died was your TV viewing that I
don't have.

After I'd responded to you yesterday, I thought a bit about how
I'd adopted my "if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it"
mentality. I have old mainframe experience and have been doing
PCs at various levels of technicality since the old Apple ][ in
1978. I was always searching for the newest hardware, software
revision, O/S, drivers, whatever. Not surprisingly, I spent a LOT
of time getting all this crap to work right. One day sometime in
the summer of 1995 I had almost a religious awakening and
realized that I was spending more time beating my system into
doing my bidding than it was providing useful work to me.

So, I just stopped cold turkey. Not much after that, I also
adopted the firm belief NOT to buy v1.0 of anything, unless the
new features are so overwhelmingly important to risk a melt-down.
My rationale is that I don't do beta testing with my Visa card,
so something like Vista is to me at least 18 months away.

I finally restored the XP partition from a ten-day-old ghost
image. All I really had to do then was reinstall three
applications I had installed since and all was well again.

Glad to hear you got out of this mess relatively unscathed!

Of course, I still wonder what is going on. My hypothesis is
that they've got stuff hard-coded in their installation
software that requires access to a "C" drive (they admit it
for one of their recent cards but the registry entries are
different for mine and I couldn't find anything that looked
like a registry entry looking for access to the "C" drive
(which, being the Vista partition, is hidden when I'm in XP
using EasyBCD and NeoGrub).

I'm now back to my former dread of ATI driver installation and
won't soon be trying to fix anything connected with my new
x1900 that isn't "broken!"

Thanks for the responses in any case.

Thank God for Ghost!!!

Yepper! In my case, it is Acronis True Image 9.0, which I hope I
NEVER need. You have helped me as well by tightening my resolve
not to upgrade even presumed good company software/drivers. I
have also been a big believer in ATI.