Question

Is it safe?

Asked by: CEHJ

http://www.atidriver.org/?gclid=CJz4q42knJ0CFVtn4wodijIO2Q

I'm hoping this is going to be safe to use and not a malware vector. I have an ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 adapter and my graphics are crawling. Quadrupling to 2GB of ram has not helped in the slightest. Something seriously wrong. XP Media Center edition

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Asked On
2009-10-01 at 10:26:01ID24777788
Tags

radeon xpress 1150

,

xp

,

media

,

center

Topic

Miscellaneous Hardware

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
19

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Answers

 

by: MagicFarmerPosted on 2009-10-01 at 10:29:09ID: 25471017

You should have no problem with the site or the automatic download for the ATI drivers.

Are you having problems with specific programs or games or are you experiencing this upon boot?

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2009-10-01 at 10:42:25ID: 25471163

Problems from the outset. BUT - also in safe mode. I noticed no fewer than three monitors listed in System Devices, despite the fact that this is a lone laptop

 

by: MagicFarmerPosted on 2009-10-01 at 10:54:02ID: 25471304

Are the monitors all labeled as generic, or do the devices recognize the model you are using?

I would go to the website of the computer manufacurer and download the specific drivers for your monitor. Then remove all  the monitors listed in devices, as well as their drivers, and reboot.  Once the system recognizes the new monitor with the new hardware wizard, point it to the location where your new drivers are and see if there is any change.  You will also want to go back to your device manager and see if your still have only one monitor listed.

 

by: MagicFarmerPosted on 2009-10-01 at 10:56:36ID: 25471330

Also, if you have external monitor available, I would plug it in and see if the graphics are still slow

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2009-10-01 at 11:33:19ID: 25471733

Yes i've tried to remove them (generic) and each time it's crashed the box.

I don't quite trust that app, but i ran it and in fact it reported the adapter driver up to date, but several disk drivers out of date. As it happens, i did think it could be disk-related.

However, i'm going to pursue graphics for a while anyway.

Here's the inventory:

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2009-10-01 at 11:42:04ID: 25471851

Crazy.  I put the service tag in on Dell and not only is my OS (XP Media Center) absent (the highest OS is Win2K) but there are 0 drivers listed even for Win2K

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2009-10-01 at 11:42:36ID: 25471856

>>Also, if you have external monitor available, I would plug it in and see if the graphics are still slow

Very good idea

 

by: MagicFarmerPosted on 2009-10-01 at 12:04:34ID: 25472095

Was this a refurbished machine?

 

by: MASQUERAIDPosted on 2009-10-01 at 12:19:00ID: 25472215

Instead of the Service Tag specific search on Dell Support try the generic 1501 list which has the ATi driver you need:
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&os=WW1&osl=en&catid=&impid=&SystemID=INS_PNT_1501
Lists the XP drivers which should be fine in MCE.

If you have been trying to get the drivers fixed for a while you may have multiple instances of conflicting drivers installed hence the three generic monitors.  It might be worth a little judicious registry pruning (http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33606840) although I'd probably steer clear of the RegCleaner suggestion in the thread.

Clean out everything first and then try the XP driver from the Dell page.

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2009-10-01 at 12:19:03ID: 25472217

Good point. I'm not sure - it's not mine.

The experiment with the external monitor revealed a small improvement. Anyway, it allowed me to delete all but one monitor. Rebooted and all three were back again

 

by: MagicFarmerPosted on 2009-10-01 at 12:33:18ID: 25472343

It may be worth deleting the monitors again, disable the plug&play, disconnect your external, and see how many are listed in your device manager after reboot.

Give this link a try:

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/win98/t1004619396

the initial posting are more on the dual-monitor front, but toward the bottom of the discussion there are some insignts into this problem.

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2009-10-01 at 22:59:04ID: 25475448

I'm still looking into the driver business. For some reason, that service tag points at the wrong hardware. There is one critical chipset driver flagged up and i'm hoping that replacing that is going to make a difference

 

by: MagicFarmerPosted on 2009-10-01 at 23:35:08ID: 25475542

Try updating the BIOS as well.

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2009-10-02 at 00:02:33ID: 25475637

MASQUERAID, i missed your post at first sorry. There's quite a lot of detail there, but looking into it and reading between the lines, is the basic point that installation of drivers is failing without a thorough clean out of all traces of the original ones?

 

by: MASQUERAIDPosted on 2009-10-02 at 09:44:05ID: 25479591

I think so - having thought about it more though there may be a problem with cleaning out all the ATi references as some of them may be required specifically for MCE  - do yo have any installation CDs with the Inspiron? If not just remove the registry entries for graphics cards.  Older graphics drivers suffered a lot with "dll Hell" where library files were not compatible and so if you installed a driver without removing the earlier version you ended up with a series of processes being called which ultimately conflicted with each other. Device manage then started showing multiple entires for the same card with the drivers occupying the same IRQs.

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2009-10-02 at 11:54:47ID: 25480887

Thanks for that. I think i'm at the point at which further investigation would be steps too far. An OS reinstall is in the offing

 

by: MASQUERAIDPosted on 2009-10-02 at 12:20:37ID: 25481141

:)  Grab the drivers off the generic Dell link first!

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2009-10-03 at 01:06:18ID: 25484366

Yes i did actually - they're all up to date :-(

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2009-10-30 at 13:36:04ID: 31636016

Thanks folks. As it happened, the ATI driver seemed to me to be buggy so i had to uninstall it

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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