ATI Drivers Problem

Put: 7.11.2006 | Rev 7.11.2006 | Contributed by Andrew Mallett

I suppose the hardware/drivers section by its nature, is destined to become a Mecca of whinges about varius problems, especially while Vista is still in RC format.

Anyway I have been running Vista 64-bit RC1 for a few weeks on the work teaching machine, an Acer 5700GX P4 3GHz with 1GB RAM. The graphics card is an ATI Radeon X550 256MB card with twin VGA outlets for projection in the classroom. Vista runs from a hard disc caddy which is swapped into identical workstations in other classrooms, except for the graphics card which is an on-baord Intel chip in the other systems.

All was well until I performed a backup of the system onto an external hdd for safe keeping. After this, the system gets stuck in a loop after rebooting on the machine with the X550 card. It boots fine on all other (non X550) systems. A reluctant reinstall indicated that all was well until the ATI drivers were added and then the fun starts.

Vista RC1 picks up the graphics card fine except I can't run the card in clone mode without these ATI drivers, which are still in Beta themselves and thus not supported. And these files are HUGE - we're talking an 80MB download here for the ATI (now owned by AMD) Catalyst driver set.

Oh well thank heavens for System Restore. I guess I'll have to wait until the next bunch of drivers is released for Vista..

- A.