Please Read entirely.
Hello experts, I have been stumped for a few days and am calling upon you for help. This problem is far more technical than I am used to handling... it is a long post so please read entirely. Reinstalling the Operating System is critically the VERY last thing that I want to do. Keep in mind that the Machine runs Excellent in all other instances except for what I am about to explain.
Here goes.
Machine in Question:
Pentium 4 2.66 Ghz
1.0 GB DDR 400mhz (tested)
160gb h/d (tested)
ATI Raedon 9200 128 mb. (tested)
Windows XP Service Pack 2
In my spare time I play Battlefield 2, as many of you may have heard of, and I am running it on TWO different machines. Recently, an update patch became available ( v1.2 ) which I downloaded and installed on both machines. One machine, has an Nvidia 256mb video card, the other has an ATI 128mb video card. The install went fine on the one with the Nvidia video card, and it SEEMED to be fine on the ATI machine, until I executed the program. The PC with the ATI video card would not execute the game (The BF2 logo popped up, screen black, back to desktop and Taskmanager showed no Instance) so I rebooted the ATI machine and then the game opened. But heres where the trouble begins, but let me mention that the NVIDIA machine took right off, didnt have to reboot after the patch was applied.
Now, once the ATI machine opened Battlefield 2 all went well, so I selected a server and once the server was loading I got the (Optimizing Shaders for optimal performance) and the server loaded successfully, but in the game, there were no buildings (Buildings in the game were invisible..I could bump into them but not see them) and the game was CHOPPY .. (move the mouse and it was really slow and intermittently stopped and started). I managed to ask one of the other players on the server if they had any problems and told them what I was experiencing, and they replied that I needed to reinstall my video drivers. Not a problem for my skill level. I had no errors in device manager at this point. I did not UNINSTALL the ATI video Catalyst, only tried to run the installer again, and was prompted to restart.
After rebooting, I tried to run the game again, and it was doing the same thing as it did after the patch, Logo -> Black screen -> Desktop with no surviving instance in taskmanager. I opened Device Manager and removed the display device, and once done rebooted. Found new hardware, and went through the wizard (Install Automatically) and it DETECTED the right video card, but once it acted like it was installing the drivers (progress bar starts quickly and one 'dot' of completion) and then very quickly
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Cannot Install this Hardware
There was a problem installing this hardware
ATI Raedon 9200
An error occured during the installation of the device
The I/O operation has been aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request.
Click finish to close the wizard.
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NOW it shows the Display Adapter with the Yellow ! and the display adapter is showing up as 'Video Controller (VGA Compatible)'
Tried this multiple times with trying to manually select the device drivers, and also UNINSTALLED the ATI Catalyst software and reinstalled it. I tried everything I know and all failed.
I thought well it was just not liking the card, and I had already bought another ATI Raedon 9550 256mb video card that I had procrastinated to upgrade this machine to, so I would go ahead install it, but it does EXACTLY the same thing as described above. It is reporting the same error, and it is just not installing the drivers.
I tried multiple approaches by removing devices and removed some "System Devices" in the Device manager such as:
Intel(R) 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV/E Processor to I/O controller - 2560
Intel(R) 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV/E Processor to AGP controller - 2561
The 'Processor to I/O controller - 2560' removed successfully
The 'Processor to AGP controller - 2561' when tried to remove, did not disappear, instead it prompted for reboot. I clicked NO to the reboot and Device Manager refreshed, but it was still there. I removed the 'Display Adapter' successfully and then tried to remove the 'Processor to AGP controller' again and clicked 'NO' to the reboot, and it was still there. Repeated unistall, and finally clicked 'YES' to the reboot.
Found new Hardware "Video Controller VGA Compatible"
all other hardware that I removed was automatically detected and installed itself, then I was prompted by the 'Found New Hardware Wizard' and proceeded as normal with "automatically install" and tried clicking 'yes connecto to internet' as well as 'Not this time' and 'No' and all tries do the same thing... after a few moments, Progress bar starts then the same I/O error as above.
ATI has a reputation of being kinda crappy with some applications, so I dug around and found an Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti 4600 (128 mb), and since the patch went well on the other machine, I figured what the heck ... It recognized the card, progress bar starts then, THIS TIME...
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Cannot Install this Hardware
There was a problem installing this hardware
Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti 4600 (Microshaft Corporation)
An error occured during the installation of the device
The I/O operation has been aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request.
Click finish to close the wizard.
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So it is recognizing the correct device (as seen above), and yes I installed Nvidia's Force software that covers a variety of Nvidia Cards, and removed the display device from Device Manager before I shut down the computer to plug in the card.
I have tried to RESTORE the computer to several different dates, but the display adapter is still the 'VGA compatible' once the restore is complete. Before I applied the patch I exported the ENTIRE registry, and tried to run the .reg backup file and no luck there either, the only thing I actually did wrong was not put the Original ATI card back in before trying to Restore or use the .reg backup, which shouldn't make that much of a difference, only should pick up new card after Restore/.reg backup and rebooting.
I am assuming this is a "Hardware" issue now, but forgive me if it is in the wrong category.
So, who wants to be the first to jump on this bigboy of a problem.
Any help is desperately needed and greatly appreciated.
Sorry for the long post.
~mike~
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