Mobile ATI driver problem

**fatbastard** · Posted: Sun, 02 Sep 2007 11:12:13 Post Subject: Mobile ATI driver problem

My sister had an old Dell 8500 with an ATI video card that suddenly died on her. She apparently tried to fix it with Dell's help but nothing worked I was told. So she gave it to me the other day for parts and I tried reloading XP since the display did seem to work in DOS. Well after loading XP the display works fine with the legacy drivers but as soon as you load ATI's drivers and reboot the screen goes black....not justdark, like the LCD power was cut. Anyone have any ideas on what could cause this? I may just reload XP and leave the crappy driver so she can use it for simple stuff like web browsing etc.

BeerCheeze · Posted: Sun, 02 Sep 2007 11:23:14 Post Subject:

Does sound like the card is bad. When you load ATI's drivers it is using the full memory, and abilities of the card. Then the card goes belly up.

The only other thing that could be is the newer drivers are a$$-raping the card. Trying downloading older drivers.

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Sun, 02 Sep 2007 11:25:13 Post Subject:

Maybe it is defaulting to a resolution higher than the monitor can handle? Perhaps not likely on Windows, but I seem to get this with Linux on any system with an ATI card... Screen just goes black until I fix things prior to boot.

Can you boot in Safe Mode and change the settings?

**fatbastard** · Posted: Sun, 02 Sep 2007 11:40:57 Post Subject:

Booted in safe mode....res was the same as the legacy driver...there is no background anymore, just black but in safe mode I do see the recycle bin and start button. The interesting thing was when it booted in safe mode it hung up a bit on an agp driver but device manager shows no probs and sees it as the right card...maybe I'll look on ebay to see how much a new card is and if it is spensive I'll just uninstall the driver and let her use it as a print server or something.

knight0334 · Posted: Sun, 02 Sep 2007 12:00:26 Post Subject:

What model Is that, a Dimension or Inspiron?

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Sun, 02 Sep 2007 12:09:57 Post Subject:

Is the driver you installed from the ATI site or from Window's Update? Sometimes the Window's Update suggested drivers seem to be older/safer, but still do fine for basic stuff.

**fatbastard** · Posted: Sun, 02 Sep 2007 12:47:50 Post Subject:

Inspiron 8500....tried drivers from Dell CD, tried to let windows do it another time but asked for cd, then last time tried the dell site. It seems anything cuses it to crap out. Checked ebay and this thing isn't worth replacing it...rather just let it run on the XP driver.

edvallie · Posted: Mon, 03 Sep 2007 04:17:24 Post Subject:

**fatbastard** · Posted: Mon, 03 Sep 2007 09:17:10 Post Subject:

Well I got the XP legacy driver running again and the highest resolution is 1280x 1024. The problem is the screen is a widescreen not a standard aspect ratio. Are there any drivers that might have the right settings that won'make it crash?

knight0334 · Posted: Mon, 03 Sep 2007 11:34:20 Post Subject:

Have you tried the DH Mobility Modder on the standard catalysts? Not one of the ATI drivers work on my Express 200M chipset for my lappy... I either have to use the originals that came with lappy or use the modding tool on a fresh set of catalysts.

http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool/index.php

You will also need to download a copy of the latest Cat's to mod.