AMD warns of security hole in its Catalyst Control Center

Minor flaw huh? I guess there really are such things as problems too simple to fix

 

Good thing I never use the auto update feature in nVidia/AMD drivers. I'd rather do it myself.

 

AMD Graphics drivers are the worst drivers out there IMO. Not because of this flaw but overall they are kinda lame.

 

I'm glad I let Microsoft download the AMD drivers only.

 

~ Good catch, Ron - thanks for this. ~

ATI aka AMD GPU drivers are notoriously buggy.

Since I have owned this PC that has a native ATI graphics card, I have disabled the auto-update service. Stop the Service via screenshot.

• If you are not comfortable doing any of this, take your PC to a qualified PC shop or a qualified PC Technician. •

 

First off, this autoupdate feature was introduced with Catalyst 11.4. If you have an older Catalyst version, you are not affected.

Second off, you don't need to mess with services related to ATI and you don't need to mess with startup entries related to ATI. If you want to disable this autoupdate feature (which is only present if you have Catalyst 11.4 or newer), all you have to do is this:

(i) Uncheck the “Automatically check for updates” option under AMD Catalyst Control Center > Information > Software Update, and (ii) choose to “Skip” notifications from the AMD Catalyst driver, which notifications recommend updating to the latest driver.

Qualified people will leave the ATI Hotkey Poller, also called ATI External Event Utility, alone - on its default setting (automatic) - for some reasons like:

You don't need to disable the ATI Hotkey Poller, also called ATI External Event Utility, to disable the autoupdate feature.

 

You guys seem to really understand this stuff, whereas I do not. Can you help me here?

I have purchased a windows retail upgrade for Vista to W7/Pro for my desktop which has Vista 32 on it. I ran the upgrade advisor and it states that the ATI Caltalyst Install Manager and ccc-Branding is incompatible. I need to uninstall them prior to the upgrade and that they can be reinstalled after W7 is up. I assume the manager is just controlling the upgrade of the drivers, so do I really need not reinstall it now that this warning has come out. Is that true? What about this ccc-Branding? It is part of ATI and it is incompatible too. Do I really need to reinstall it?

My desktop: 1.ATI Radeon X1200 graphics adapter. ATI Catalyst Control Centre V2007.0613.1506.25058 (150MB).

I am not too sure of this, but isn't the AMD RAID driver and ATI video drivers included in the OS or core chipset driver? If that is so, does that mean I only need to get the W7 chipset for W7 from the desktop manufacturer after W7 is installed ...seems logical that the Vista chipset driver for the Radeon family has to remain installed on Vista during the upgrade process, but needs to be upgraded to W7 to work properly.

 

1. The last version of ATI Catalyst Control Center that works with Radeon X1200 isn't affected by the vulnerability we are talking about in this thread.

2. Uninstall what is incompatible (do this before the upgrade to Windows 7).

3. Download and install what is compatible after checking with their Autodetect tool (do this after the upgrade to Windows 7): http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/auto_detect.aspx

 

Thank you. That helps.