Radeon 9800 driver calamity

[bdf1215 0]

I am trying to get a Radeon 128 (Sapphire 1024-1C47) to work and am having driver issues. I am running an Athlon 2400 on a VIA motherboard with KT266/A and KT333/A chipset. I am using 2x256 memory (speed unknown) and am using XP Home Edition.

 

After installation, my computer automatically installed a generic driver. After downloading the driver for my Radeon card, I installed Microsoft netFX and then ran the installation program for the driver and rebooted. My system still says I am using a generic driver, however.

 

I have run dxdiag and it passes the DirectDraw test, but disables DirectDraw, Direct3D, and AGP Texture Acceleration because it claims that I am using a generic driver (vga.dll). Catalyst does not recognize a graphics adapter, but my device manager shows that I have the latest driver. It also is using the Radeon 9800-secondary device instead of the Radeon 9800 device. Both of these are using the lastest drivers.

 

I have tried earlier drivers and I have also tried a different hard drive swiped clean. Can anyone help me? Hopefully there is an obvious oversight I can fix. Thanks.

[thatsteveguy 0]

Did you make sure to install your Via drivers (hyperion) as well?

 

S

[bdf1215 0]

Trying that now...

[bdf1215 0]

Trying that now...

[bdf1215 0]

Oops, didn't mean to stutter...

 

 

Okay, I had working VIA drivers, but reinstalled anyway, to no avail. Any other suggestions?

[bdf1215 0]

I've been trying everything... Anyone have any input?

[jmmijo 1]

Just out of curiousity, is your graphics card a RAGE 128 based GPU or did you really mean something like a Radeon 7000 series or greater ?!?

 

The reason I ask is that perhaps the driver installs but doesn't tell you it can't find an appropriate GPU/Graphics Card, goes ahead and installs and when you reboot the machine it reverts back to a default generic driver.

 

 

[bdf1215 0]

I didn't see anything about a Rage 128 chip, all I know is that it's a Sapphire card with an ATI Radeon 9800 chip. It's so odd that Device Manager shows the ATI driver, but nothing else recognizes it. Is it just time to return this refurb card?

[technoplume 0]

did you install the ati drive or the sapphire drive. they are realy different drive and one does not work on the other.

[Yankee 0]

Hello,

 

Do you have service pack 2 installed?

 

IIRC you need to install it before you can use the latest drivres (catalyst 5.5).

 

[bdf1215 0]

I am using sp2, so I don't think that is the problem. Also, at first I tried the ATI Driver, but also went back to the sapphire site and tried that driver later. It was just catalyst 5.3, and it didn't work for me either. Those were good suggestions, though...

[jmmijo 1]

Originally posted by technoplume:

Quote:

did you install the ati drive or the sapphire drive. they are realy different drive and one does not work on the other.

 

Hmm, well that doesn't seem likely as I use the OEM ATi Catalyst drive all the time with Sapphire graphics cards at work

 

@bdf, just wanted to make sure it wasn't an older GPU graphics cards. The other possible issue is a corrupted registry or even some kind of hardware failure like with the HD and/or the AGP slot on the motherboard for instance.

 

Do you have any other AGP 4x graphics card to test with ?!?

[bdf1215 0]

I'm not sure of the specs, but I am upgrading from a Geforce4 ti 4200. In fact, I've put it back in for the time being. Works like a charm. Last question before I return this infernal card: Do you think that a defective card could cause all of these driver recognition issues, or would that simply be a driver problem?

 

P.S. Thanks to all that have chimed in; I appreciate it.

[bdf1215 0]

Oh, one more thing... I checked the card itself and found a sticker that says "Radeon 9800 Atlantis 128M 128-bit DDR V/D/VO". I checked the sapphire site and found the card itself on there. It says, obviously that it is an ATI Radeon 9800 chipset, and basically all the sapphire site has are radeon drivers and rage drivers (which my card is not a rage card). It looks like I'm back to the drawing board on this one. Anyone have anything else before I return this puppy?

[Yankee 0]

This is a long shot...

 

Did you uninstall the drivers for the TI4200 before installing the drivers for the Radeon 9800?

 

 

[jmmijo 1]

First try yankee's suggestion and uninstall/remove the nVidia drivers first. Shut the machine down and then install the Radeon card and it's drivers and see what happens after the reboot.

[bdf1215 0]

Okay, I have needed to swipe my HD for some time, and I figured this was a good time to do it (to clear out all the junk and extra variables). I haven't downloaded SP2 or Microsoft NetFX yet, but I did install the card and drivers (the ones that don't need Microsoft NetFX) and I am getting the exact same errors and problems. My DxDiag says:

 

Main Driver: vga.dll

Version: 5.01.2600.0000 (English)

Date: 8/29/2002 7:00:00

WHQL Logo'd: Yes

Mini VDD: vga.sys

VDD: n/a

DDI Version: unknown

 

The system is using the generic video driver. Please install video driver provided by the hardware manufacturer.

To test DirectDraw functionality, click the "Test DirectDraw" button above.

Direct3D functionality not available. You should verify that the driver is a final version from the hardware manufacturer.

 

I have tried multiple versions of ATI's drivers and none of them will work. My Device Manager has two devices shown- Radeon and Radeon- Secondary, both of which show up to date drivers. Radeon can't find resources because Radeon- Secondary is using them. Anyone have any more suggestions?

[Yankee 0]

I reccomend installing SP2. Have you checked out the getting started manual from ATI? Here is a link.

 

http://www2.ati.com/manuals/r9800Getting_Started.pdf

 

Good Luck

 

Yankee

[ScinteX 0]

Hi BDF1215, thx for the pm man it wakes me up sometimes LOL

 

 

Righty then 1st thing is 1st....

 

Forget the SP2 stuff and lets just rock on with getting your card up and running. I cant see SP2 causing a problem since I run the Sapphire Radeon 9800XT 256Mb and have never had a problem with it.

 

***********Verify or do this bit***********

There should only be 2 required steps here:

 

1: Install DirectX 9.0c

2: Download the correct driver from ATI.

 

1:

If you havent already, install DX9c and make sure you reboot after the install (9c is already in SP2 btw)

Download here:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=835

 

This links to the redistributable package of DX9c. You can do a slimmer install but I usually find that just installing the whole lot can help iron out troublesome situations (like this 1!). Cant find the link from MS just yet, but guru3d is a good source.

 

2:

Onto ATI. I know this might sound silly but you can download the wrong driver and also one with lots of bloat! I have never had the need for catalyst - i always install the graphic driver only. Catalyst invokes the .Net framework and a whole host of other stuff. I am of the thought that if my card works well without catalyst and i still have an ample amount of RAM left after windows has started up then why load lots more stuff into RAM?? lol anyway this way works for me.

 

I cant post a direct link to the ATI driver so I will have to guide you through it:

 

First up go to http://www.ati.com

Click "Drivers and software" from the menu at the top

Click "Windows XP Drivers and Software"

Then click "RADEON"

Then click "CATALYST 5.5 Windows XP - Driver Download"

 

Now click "download" but make sure in the column named "catalyst component" it does not say "catalyst"!!!! The download should be 26Mb.

 

Install that then reboot. During the installation your driver should be automatically updated.

 

 

*****This bit should sort you out (hopefully) *****

 

Go into System in the XP control panel, Hardware, Device Manager and click the cross next to Display adaptors. In there you should have:

 

Radeon 9800

Radeon 9800 secondary

 

...Or something similar

Right click Radeon 9800 and click properties. Click the Driver tab. In here it will probably show that you have vga.sys as your driver. It should have "ATI Technologies Inc." as the driver provider.

 

I assuming that vga.sys is listed above... if so, close the properties screen so that u are back at the device manager screen.

 

Right click "Radeon" and click "Uninstall". Click OK when prompted. Now reboot your PC.

 

When XP starts up it should see that it has no driver for your card and show you an installation wizard. Go through the wizard and make sure it picks (or you tell it to use) the right driver.

 

If this doesn’t work and XP wont install the right driver it probably is because the drivers you have are incorrect in some way. In this case, cancel the installation wizard and download the drivers again from the location above.

 

I hope this goes ok - there are so many variables it’s hard to detail every situation.

 

 

 

Any probs just shout.

 

S