Help: Removing ATI Driver and Installing a New One

[Rl'Halsinor]

My PC is about 13 months old. My video card is a connect3D X800 GTO and has the same driver when I installed it into my 939 build. I need to update my driver from the current one but I find ATI's instructions convoluted. So, can someone tell me step by step what I need to successfully uninstall the old driver and replace it with a new driver? Thanks; you're help is appreciated. It has been a few years since I last did this.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Here's a link to decent instructions. Use at your own risk, though; any time you start deleting files willy-nilly in the Windows directory, or hacking the registry, you're taking risks.

If you're not experiencing major issues, and you're moving to a later Catalyst version, I wouldn't bother, though. I'd just remove the Control Center and the drivers from Add/Remove Programs, reboot, and install the new Catalyst package. They've gotten much better about driver upgrades in the past couple years, a side-effect of putting out buggy drivers and making people update them all the time.

 

[Rl'Halsinor]

So, Rodrigo, if I am reading you correctly the add/remove program is sufficiant in fully removing the current drivers in order to install the new Catalyst drivers?

 

[Wonko the Sane]

You can get the ATI Uninstall Tool here.

It erases all things ATI on your machine, from what I understand. (That is, I've used it and my computer didn't melt )

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

So, Rodrigo, if I am reading you correctly the add/remove program is sufficiant in fully removing the current drivers in order to install the new Catalyst drivers?

It's sufficient, unless it's not

In most situations, you can just use add/remove, reboot, and install the new. If you're having driver issues across the board (as opposed to with just a single game, for example), if you're jumping across several revisions of the Catalyst drivers, or if you're trying to back-rev, you should be more thorough.

The ATI uninstall referenced in the post above is old; I'm not certain whether or not that it would still be useful.

Until recently, I had an ATI board for about 3 years, and the only time I had to do a complete slash'n'burn on the drivers was when I had to back-rev to a previous version to get EQ2 to work.

Given the frequency of driver updates nowadays, they've gotten much better about making the update process less painful.

 

[Rl'Halsinor]

Thanks. NWN1, for some unforseen reason, does not load because of the architecture of the X800 series cards. I kid you not; even ATI lists it. I installed cleanly - twice - but just before the load window an error occurs. Again, for some reason it is the 800 series. I am hoping the newest Catalyst will allow me to play. Thanks again for your help.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

This is what I use. I run it in save mode and it works great.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Thanks. NWN1, for some unforseen reason, does not load because of the architecture of the X800 series cards. I kid you not; even ATI lists it. I installed cleanly - twice - but just before the load window an error occurs. Again, for some reason it is the 800 series. I am hoping the newest Catalyst will allow me to play. Thanks again for your help.

I've sworn off ATI cards from here on out. I had 10x as many driver issues with my 9800 than I've ever had with NVidia cards.

 

[dagger]

Well I have never had any driver issues on any game, and I play all of the newest games, I get several a month.

Just use Driver Cleaner Professional 1.5 in safe mode to do a super clean. Make sure you have Direct X 9 c

 

[Rl'Halsinor]

I have DirectX 9C. Please refresh my memory, how do I enter Safe Mode from XP SP2?