can't get ATI drivers to work

[Lusche]

can't get ati card to run properly

vga card: new sapphire radeon 4850
board: asrock k10n78m pro (with gf 8200 onboard vga and GF8100 chipset)
cpu athlon64 x2
new be quiet 580w psu

the onboard VGA is disabled in bios (by setting shared memory to "auto" and declaring PCIE as primary, just like the manual said)

fresh XP professional install with all updates (incl SP3)

no other software installed so far (no anti virus)

without installing any driver, so that im just using the native windows drivers, the card is working and capable of delivering all resolutions @32bit color depth
but no ati driver will work, neither the one provided on cd, nor the latest stuff from ATI website.

I tried several combinations, each with a complete fresh XP installation just to be on the safe side: just display drivers or the full package, with or without nvidia mainboard drivers, stock CD ati drivers or from website, win XP updated to SP1, sp2 or all the way to SP3
no joy.
when i have ati display driver installed i can only start windows in "VGA mode". when I try to start normal, the last thing I see is the win loading screen, before my monitor stops to get any signal.
when using the VGA mode, I can get to desktop. device manager shows radeon 4850, no conflict, no other vga device visible. When I try to get out of "vga mode" by changing resolution - bang, no signal. when I try to simply reboot - windows loading screen, then no signal.
removing ati drivers, going back to win native - card displays every resolution I want.

need fresh ideas...

[Skuzzy]

That 580W power supply may not be enough power to allow the 4850 card to get into native mode, thus the driver install failure.

Just a guess.

[Lusche]

The PSU has 4X12  with 18A each, combined current 38A
max combined power is 456w

Sapphire states system requirements as follows:
"450w power supply is required (550 recommended for crossfire), 1x75W 6-pin PCI express power connect  is required"

on the ati.amd website I find BeQuiet PSU's with even less output being certified for the 4850, so does the BeQuiet website itself.

the only other things drawing power in my system are 1 harddisk, 1 DVDRW and mainboard&CPU.


Unfortunately, "not enough ooomph" is still the only explanation I'm having myself right now... 

[gyrene81]

removing ati drivers, going back to win native - card displays every resolution I want.

need fresh ideas...

What ATI driver are you trying to install with that card...what brand is it?

[Ack-Ack]

I'm inclined to agree with Skuzzy that the PSU is most likely the cause but on the other hand a 580W PSU should be enough to power an ATI 4850 card.

Do you get any errors when trying to install the ATI drivers?


ack-ack

[Bruv119]

I run a 5850 on a  620w.....

[Lusche]

I'm inclined to agree with Skuzzy that the PSU is most likely the cause but on the other hand a 580W PSU should be enough to power an ATI 4850 card.

Do you get any errors when trying to install the ATI drivers?


ack-ack

When I install the display drivers only, no error will show at all. It just doesn't work outside when using the drivers. Only VGA mode or windows native drivers (the latter ones at any resolution)  do. Also there is no conflict visible in device manager, "ATI radeon 4800 series" shows up.
However, whenever I installed the full package including the catalys control center, I often (always? pretty sure it was always...) read a message like "ATI Catalyst™ Control Center is not supported by the current driver version", even though the drivers came with the very same package - and I was always installing from scratch on a fresh XP installation.

Now I took a look at the card itself.
It has two leds, one for 12v power malfunction, one for overheat. The "power warning " LED never lit up (and by the way, I also tested various power cables & plugs).
But each time I tried to use the ATI drivers (and lost signal) the "overtemp" LED started to burn at the very instant. But fan is running, and card is not even warm at all...


Driver versions tested: 8.732  and (I think) 8.65 (the one from CD)

[Ack-Ack]

When I install the display drivers only, no error will show at all. It just doesn't work outside when using the drivers. Only VGA mode or windows native drivers (the latter ones at any resolution)  do. Also there is no conflict visible in device manager, "ATI radeon 4800 series" shows up.
However, whenever I installed the full package including the catalys control center, I often (always? pretty sure it was always...) read a message like "ATI Catalyst™ Control Center is not supported by the current driver version", even though the drivers came with the very same package - and I was always installing from scratch on a fresh XP installation.

Now I took a look at the card itself.
It has two leds, one for 12v power malfunction, one for overheat. The "power warning " LED never lit up (and by the way, I also tested various power cables & plugs).
But each time I tried to use the ATI drivers (and lost signal) the "overtemp" LED started to burn at the very instant. But fan is running, and card is not even warm at all...


Driver versions tested: 8.732  and (I think) 8.65 (the one from CD)

According to those diagnostic LED lights, the D1602 LED would have lit up if there was a power issue.  Based on the error message you're were getting when trying to install the entire CCC suite and the version number of the drivers you're using, I would recommend you install the latest 10.5 Catalyst drivers. 

Make sure that you uninstall your current drivers, reboot your machine and then cancel the Add New Hardware wizard once you get into Windows.  Next, run a program like Driver Cleaner Pro and use it to delete any remaining ATI files and reboot your machine again.  Again, once Windows boots up cancel the Add New Hardware wizard and then run the Catalyst 10.5 installer to install the drivers.

Another thing, there was an issue with some Asrock motherboards and the ATI 4xxx line and Asrock released a BIOS update for these motherboards.  You may want to check the Asrock site to see if your motherboard has an update to the BIOD for the ATI 4xxx cards.

If you still can't get it to work and it's not possible to try it on another machine, your best bet would probably to RMA it and send it in or since it's new see if you can exchange it.


ack-ack

[Lusche]

I did use the latest Catalyst 10.5 drivers (8.xxx are the internal numbers I have learned now

And to make sure i won't get into any trouble by having traces of old drivers I did a complete XP reinstall between the tries. Just to make sure.

So far, I have now tested Catalyst 10.5, 9.9 and 8.12.
My BIOS is up to date.

The whole thing just puzzles me 

[Ack-Ack]

It's possible then you just have a bad card and exchanging it would probably be your best bet at this point.


ack-ack

[Lusche]

It's possible then you just have a bad card and exchanging it would probably be your best bet at this point.


ack-ack

And that's what I'm going to do tomorrow.
I'm still just wondering, how I can get
"The Catalyst Control Centre is not supported by the driver version of your enabled graphics adapter"
because that sounds more like a software issue. But then, I installed all that ATI stuff from one single package....

[Ack-Ack]

And that's what I'm going to do tomorrow.
I'm still just wondering, how I can get
"The Catalyst Control Centre is not supported by the driver version of your enabled graphics adapter"
because that sounds more like a software issue. But then, I installed all that ATI stuff from one single package....

You can try the old school method of installing it.  When I first got my ATI card, I had to install it this way in order for it to be seen in Windows properly.

Control Panelt --> Add New Hardware --> Next (Windows will do a search of installed devices) --> Click "Yes, I have already connected the hardware" --> Next

You'll now get a window with various hardware selections, scroll down to the bottom and select "Add a new hardware device" then click Next.

Select "Install the hardware that I manually select from a list", then click Next.

Now you'll see a window with the common hardware types, select "Display adapters", then click Next.

A window that displays the manufacturer and model will appear.  Select ATI as the manufacturer and then scroll in the models section to see if your card is listed.  If it is, highlight it.  If it isn't, don't worry because the next step is the same regardless if the model appears or not.

After the manufacturer and model have been selected, click on the "Have Disk" button and then browse your hard drive and locate the ATI folder that the Catalyst drivers unpacked to (usually C:\ATI\SUPPORT\[Driver version number]\Driver) then click OK.  If the driver .inf file is seen by Windows it will start installing the drivers manually and reboot after its done.

If you're going to try the above, remember to make sure that you've uninstalled the drivers, run a driver cleaner and even a reg cleaner to get rid of all references to the ATI driver before attempting what I wrote.

If this doesn't work, definitely a bad card.


ack-ack

[Lusche]

You can try the old school method of installing it.  When I first got my ATI card, I had to install it this way in order for it to be seen in Windows properly.

Hm. Windows had no trouble seeing my card, and the display driver was (apparently) installed correctly. And most important, I was tired of reading everything in 640x480, so I already had removed the 4850 and put back in an old Nvidia card. 
Let's see what the dealer will say

Thx for your help! 

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I run a 5850 on a  620w.....

Me too, plus 4 harddrives, optical drive and 6 fans. Runs without a glitch.

[doc1kelley]

Getting back to the power supply thingy.  Skuzzy recently enlightened some in a different thread about how power supplies are almost always delivering only 80% of their rated output.  The 450wt supply that you have still sounds suspect to me in this problem.  Now about that CCC thingy... It's junk!  ATI tray tools is far better at doing everything that the Catalyst Control Center/panel does without the bloat and hogging of the resources available.

All the Best...

    Jay