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ATI Catalyst Install Manager has stopped working

This problem has bugged me for a while: when installing AMD/ATI Catalyst drivers (version 7.8, 7.9, 7.10 and who knows the new 7.11), everything goes fine until you click the Install or Uninstall button:

You are then greeted with the message Catalyst Install Manager has stopped working. Apparently this has something to do with the VS2005 C++ redistributables, but that shouldn’t be our problem.

The fix is quite easy:

• open a CMD-box with administrative privileges
• go to your ATI drivers, probably in a location similar to this one:
  C:\ATI\SUPPORT\8-10_vista32_dd_ccc_wdm_emu_69564\
• then go to the BIN (or BIN64 for Vista64) folder underneath
• type this command:
  atisetup.exe -Install -Output screen

If all goes well the drivers will then install successfully. Do not forget to reboot your machine after installation!
Good luck!

Labels: AMD, ATI, Catalyst, crash, driver, drivers, fix, install, installation, installer, solution, Windows, Windows Vista, XP

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  Posted by oVan on Tuesday, November 04, 2008 | PermaLink | 11 comments

ATI Releases Catalyst 7.8 with Free Half-Life 2 Games

After the rather buggy Catalyst 7.7 drivers, ATI has today released the highly anticipated Catalyst 7.8 driver set.

• Download Catalyst 7.8 (English, 72MB)


• Download Catalyst 7.8 (Multilanguage, 107MB)

Note that Catalyst 7.8 also installs the Steam Games client and you can get 2 free games from ATI here: Half-Life 2 DeathMatch and Half-Life 2 Lost Coast!

This is a quote from the ATI website:

Effective immediately, all owners of ATI Radeon graphics cards may receive a free copy of Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch via Steam. Steam will automatically confirm the presence of ATI Radeon hardware and then enable immediate access to full versions of the games free of charge.

Besides tons of bugfixes, there should be a noticeably performance improvement – especially for the Radeon HD 2600 and HD 2400 series.

Here's an extract of the Release Notes, some of the fixes for Vista and XP:

• Call of Duty->United Offensive: Having all of the in-game settings at their maximum levels along with the Catalyst™ Control Center->3D aspect set to Optimal Quality no longer results in the Windows Vista (64 bit) operating system failing to respond after a short period of game play. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28793
  
• The default audio device is no longer set to ATI HD Audio after installation of the display driver for the ATI Radeon™ HD2900, HD2600, and HD2400. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28483
  
• Hot-plugging a CRT to a system running Windows Vista and containing an ATI Radeon™ X1100/1150 series of product no longer results in extended desktop mode failing to be applied. Further details can be found in topic number 737-25801
  
• Enabling CrossFire™ followed by disconnecting and then reconnecting the CRT display device no longer results in duplicate video options being seen within the Catalyst™ Control Center. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27457
  
• Enabling CrossFire™ followed by setting AA to 14x and AF to 16x no longer results in the AA showing a setting of 0x level when disabling CrossFire™ and unchecking the AA option in the 3D aspect. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27458
  
• Making changes to the Color aspect found in the Catalyst™ Control Center without applying the changes no longer results in the Reactivate ATI color controls button remaining active after the Catalyst™ Control Center is closed and then re-launched. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27459
  
• Enabling CrossFire™ followed by setting the OverDrive™ clocks to their maximum settings no longer results in the Catalyst™ Control Center failing to accurately report the requested OverDrive™ values. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27621
  
• Performing an un-install of the display drivers on a CrossFire™ configured system no longer results in extended desktop mode becoming active resulting in all of the desktop icons failing to appear. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28478
  
• Catalyst™ Control Center->3D->Anti-Aliasing: Unchecking the option to Use Application Setting found in the 3D aspect page when CrossFire™ is enabled no longer results in the maximum AA setting being 6x. This issue may also be experienced under the Windows XP operating system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28479
  
• Performing either a custom or express install of the display driver no longer results in the system possibly failing to respond and the installation of the driver failing. This issue was known to occur when using an ATI Radeon™ X1950 CrossFire™ Edition product installed on in a system containing an Intel975. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28481
  
• HDMI audio stutter is no longer heard when playing MPEG clip at certain resolutions on some HDMI device. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28484
  
• The Scaling options found in the Catalyst™ Control Center no longer disappears when relaunching the Catalyst™ Control Center after applying optimized and custom formats for Component Video. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28855
  
• Connecting a secondary display device (CRT) and enabling extended desktop mode no longer results in invalid refresh rates being available in the Display Manager. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28787
  
• Making adjustments to the Gamma, Brightness, and Contrast and not applying the changes no longer results in the desktop image failing to return to its default color values when performing a hot-reboot of the system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28787
  
• All supported display resolutions are now available in the Display Manager when connecting a secondary display device and enabling extended desktop mode. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28789
  
• Performing an un-install of the display driver no longer results in the display entering an extended desktop mode and the desktop icons failing to be displayed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28478
  
• Setting the Avivo Video Brightness to less than 0 within the Catalyst™ Control Center no longer results in a white frame being created in the Windows Media Player when fullscreen mode is enabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28790
  
• The Enable ATI Overdrive clocks for 3d applications is no longer available on non supported products such as the ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 series of product. Further information may be found in topic number 737-28477
  
• Setting the Avivo Video De-interlacing setting to auto, motion adaptive or vector adaptive no longer results in certain DVDs, menu videos and some special features failing to benefit from the options. Further information on this issue may be found in topic number 737-27196
  
• The color depth no longer changes to 8bpp when enabling or disabling CrossFire™ for the first time. Further information may be found in topic number 737-28485
  
• Connecting a TV followed by removing the display resolution of 640x480 from the mode table no longer results in the both the TV and LCD failing to display an image. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28490
  
• An unhandled exception no longer occurs when running an OGL application and resuming from S3 under Vista on various ATI Radeon™ Xpress 1200/1250/1300 series products. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27960
  
• Windows Media Player: Playing a DVD in full screen mode no longer results in vertical bar corruption being noticed during playback. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28497
  
• DVD display no longer blinks in red when Overdrive is enabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28794
  

Some of the fixes for XP:

• Star Wars knights of the Old Republic 2: Corruption is no longer seen when running the game on some members of the ATI Radeon™ Xpress 1200/1250/1300 series of products. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27098
  
• CounterStrike Source, Day of Defeat Source, and Half-Life 2 Episode 1, Excessive fog is no longer noticed when playing these games. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28795
  
• The Overscan/Underscan slider bar is no longer enabled when setting display resolutions of 1280x1024 or higher on systems containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 2900 XT series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28843
  
• Adobe After Effects 8: The application no longer fails to load on systems containing an ATI Radeon™ X700 series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28796
  
• PowerDVD6: Momentary desktop corruption is no longer noticed when minimizing the DVD playback window after stretching the playback window approximately 80%. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28797
  
• The system no longer becomes unresponsive and no longer requires a reboot while randomly moving Video Player window from primary to extended desktop under certain hardware configurations where the second adapter is an ATI Radeon™ X1200/1250/1270 series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27092
  
• A warning message indicating CrossFire™ cannot be enabled because some 3D applications are running or the interconnect cable is not connected, or the motherboard has no communication channels between PCI-Express slots is no longer displayed when using a motherboard with an Intel I965 chipset. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28798
  
• The CrossFire™ page is no longer greyed out and cannot be enabled when attempting to use a software CrossFire™ configuration on a system using a motherboard with an Intel I975 chipset. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28799
  
• The Avivo components are now listed in the ADD/Remove Programs after installation of the display driver. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28800
  
• Switching HD-DVD titles during playback with hardware acceleration enabled no longer results in the playback to be blocked. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28802
  
• WinDVD8: Playing a DVD and changing the video setting to Hardware Acceleration mode no longer results in corruption being noticed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28803
  

Labels: ATI, download, driver, drivers, free, games, Vista, Windows, Windows Vista, XP

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  Posted by oVan on Tuesday, August 14, 2007 | PermaLink | 0 comments

FIX: Solving ATI Black Screen Problems in Vista

I've mentioned in my previous post about remotely restarting Vista with RDP that my switch from the finally fully working but oh so slow nVidia Quadro FX 550 card to the very fast (Aero Graphics: 5.9, Gaming Graphics: 5.5) and affordable XpertVision ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT Super didn't work out because of the many sleep/hibernate problems in Vista.

To explain the situation a bit more, here's what my problems (and some early solutions) looked like.

• The system (sometimes) boots normally and the ATI card performs fast and stable.


• Putting Vista into Sleep mode or Hibernation mode always works.


• Shutting down Windows Vista also always works.


• Resuming from Sleep or Hibernation, or powering up sometimes works, but other times this can lead to this:
  
  
  
  1. Boot or resume works but with black screen syndrome: Windows is running but the ATI card appears not present and thus you get no picture whatsoever. You can however log in remotely using Remote Desktop Client.
  
  
  2. Boot or resume fails during the BIOS POST routine, and after some 30 seconds you get two beeps indicating your machine is tired of waiting on the video card to come alive.
  
  
  
  In the first case, it is enough to shutdown your pc remotely, and then retry the whole routine.
  In the second case, it only helped (in my case) to eithe remove and reinsert the ATI card, or to remove the power while your pc is hanging in the BIOS routine. Both solutions reset the video card and should get you going.
  


• Note that this happens with the ATI Catalyst 7.7 drivers, as well as with the beta version (RC3) of Catalyst 7.8.
  

However, while checking the very limited ATI/AMD support site, I decided to try some of the few solutions they had for similar but not identical problems.

To my big surprise, one of them actually worked... I've been able to put my workstation to Sleep, Shutdown, Restart for several times and not once did it fail.
Here's the solution:

1. Open the Start menu and type services.msc, then press Enter:
   
   
   


2. You'll now see the list of services. Select the ATI External Event Utility service, then press Enter:
   
   
   


3. This brings up the properties window. You'll notice that the service is started but that you can't stop it.
   
   
   


4. Change the Startup Type dropdown list from Automatic into Manual.
   
   
   


5. Close this window by pressing the OK button, then reboot your machine (with a proper restart via the Start menu).
   


6. Test the Sleep, Shutdown, Restart and Hibernate functions... it should work now.
   

I hope this really solves it, and that I don't need to revise this post or write a follow-up.

Labels: ATI, crash, driver, hibernate, Microsoft, problem, problems, sleep, Vista, Windows Vista

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  Posted by oVan on Friday, August 10, 2007 | PermaLink | 5 comments

FIX: How-to solve your Windows Vista Sleep problems

You've heard it before: some people rave about Windows Vista, others keep complaining. From the computers I've installed and/or upgraded so far, I can tell that it's a hit or miss operation. Either it all works out smoothly, or it goes down to hell quickly.

One of the biggest problems I've encountered so far is that the new Hybrid Sleep from Windows Vista works so good on my Dell Latitude D810 notebook, and at the same time totally made the Vista Experience worthless on a Dell Precision 650 Workstation and even on a brand new Dell Precision 690 Workstation.

Here's what goes wrong: you push the power button in the Start menu – this is by default configured to use the Sleep mode. Sometimes this works ok, other times you get a black screen, some USB-peripherals are correctly disabled but the machine itself doesn't power off (fans keep turning etc.). To make matters worse, you can't wake your pc because your USB keyboard has already been disabled.

It also occurs that while your machine apparently went to sleep without problems, it won't start up again or even if it does, it hangs on a black screen and you can't do anything to go further.

The big constants between my Precision 650 and the Precision 690 were: a SCSI controller based on the LSI Fusion MPT chipset in the 650 and the newer version SAS/SATA Raid controller from LSI in the 690; and both machines had an nVidia Quadro FX workstation graphics card (Quadro FX 500 in the PWS650, FX 550 in the PWS690).

The solutions I've tried:

1. Having tried the latest drivers for the LSI based controller, downloaded from the support websites at Dell, HP, Intel, and LSI-Logic, it didn't solve the problem. I did see controller errors in the Event Viewer that were obviously related to the sleep problem, but the most recent drivers didn't solve a thing.


2. Updated BIOS firmware for the machines, installed most recent drivers for about anything in the machine, including the latest Intel INF files. No help.


3. Changed the Power Plan settings in the Vista control panel to never sleep, but use Hibernate instead. Unfortunately this gave me the same problems.


4. Changed the BIOS settings to use agressive S1 power state instead of S3, so that more devices are disabled and more power conserved. Alas, no resolution.


5. Reset all BIOS and Power plan settings to their default. I've experienced exactly one (1) successful sleep, after that it was back to square one.


6. This gave me the working solution: I changed from the latest WHQL nVidia drivers 97.46 to the nVidia beta drivers 158.18. Despite their wonderful explanation on how to install them, it didn't work at first: my video card was not supported. No problem, I've been a supporting fan of the LaptopVideo2Go website, and they have modified INF files for about every possible nVidia driver release, both official WHQL and beta drivers. So I grabbed a copy of the modified INF for the 158.18 driver and the install went smoothly. The only problem so far is that I can't access the new nVidia control panel, other than that the system runs much more smoothly than with the 97.46 driver and Sleep mode works perfectly so far!

Time will tell if and how good it keeps working, but so far the sky is bright :-)

This obviously leads me to the conclusion that nVidia was, contrary to ATI, totally unprepared for the launch of Vista, although they've had access to the beta and RC versions for months! Just do a Google search on "Vista sleep nVidia problem"... you'll find hundreds of thousands of pages. The machines I've installed or upgraded using an ATI video card never experienced this problem, they just work out of the box. In fact, they've had an WHQL'd driver from the very (consumer) launch of Vista, while nVidia had to catch up weeks and months later.

Another company that is totally unprepared for Vista is Creative Labs, but I'll save that for a future story!

Update: here's my follow-up post about more Vista Sleep problems

Update 2: I published the third post about Vista sleep problems, in which I removed the final culprit and solved the problem completely!

Labels: ATI, creative, driver, fix, hibernate, hibernation, hybrid, INF, Microsoft, nVidia, problem, sleep, solution, Vista, Windows

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  Posted by oVan on Friday, April 20, 2007 | PermaLink | 7 comments