Problem installing ATI Catalyst driver

I have WinXP SP2. After I formatted with WinXp SP1 no problem arises (I think), but when I upgraded the OS to WinXp SP2 in the middle of the process it says that it has some incompatibility with the VGA and that need to be upgraded or the system will be unstable or problem will arise....but still I click to continue the installation process.

After re-boot, I found out that the screen resolution is not so good, and the AGP is disabled and also the fast write capability. I later learned that the ATI Catalyst was not fully functioning and that driver was not installed. (I have Radeon 9550).When I tried to installed the installation ATI cd it can't be installed and that it has severe problem...my pc pop-ups and asked me to try to returned using the standard VGA driver before installing the ATI Catalyst driver.

I'm not a techno, and my friend who was a computer "expert" here was not able to attend to my problem at this time and was very busy and that I am also worried that he didn't know bout this.

How can I returned my pc into standard VGA driver so that I can install completely the ATI Catalyst driver?

Is there a need to re-format my pc again and begin to square one?

Is there really a step by step processes of installing things first comes first before other should be installed or else it will not be installed properly?

Actually, this was just the first time I re-format my pc since I acquired it 2yrs ago, and it was working fine coz it was assembled in Manila and the person who assembled this pc was a personnel working in Asian Tech store the authorized distributor of AMD products and he is really good and up to date but he was in Manila and I am in the province.

 

Have you installed motherboard drivers? Also, did you get proper ATI Catalyst™ 7.10 Display Driver for Windows XP 32 or 64-bit (based on OS).

 

Download the latest ATI Catalyst drivers first (mentioned in the post by TheTOM_SK)

Then right-click on the desktop "My Computer" icon and choose Properties. This opens up the System Properties sheet. Select the tab labelled Hardware and then click on the button in that page labelled Device Manager.
This will bring up the list of hardware attached to the computer. In the list is Display Adapters and this will probably have a Yellow warning icon next to it.

Click on the + sign in front of display adapters. There should be a Radeon ... item. Select and double click. That brings up the property sheet for your display adapter select the Driver Tab and click the Update Driver button. (this is a non-destructive process since underneath that button is a Roll Back Driver button.)

When you click the Update driver button you will get the Hardware Update wizard. The first question is whether or not to allow Windows to search for a driver.Select "no not this time"

The next sheet gives you another choice select "Install from a list or specific location (Advanced).

In the next sheet tick the box "Include this location in the search" and browse to the location where you have the downloaded drivers. This should do the trick.

If this fails and the ATI Catalyst installer complains about existing drivers then you may have to choose Uninstall (Advanced) rather than Update to first uninstall the existing drivers and then go through the above procedure after that,

*** If you feel at all unhappy about doing any of this I suggest you wait until you can contact your expert. ***

 

I had to use the official ATI removal tool to sort this out

 

This is a common ATI driver problem. Goggle search and you will find many similar complaints. It has something to do with the incomplete removal of your previous driver.

 

You mean, is there really a need to download the latest ATI driver catalyst installer and the one that comes along with when I bought the motherboard 2yrs ago was already outdated and it will never be "accepted" by my pc?

Coz I thought that the ATI CD installer that comes along with my motherboard (Gigabyte) was still just ok and will be installed and still I can use it, and operate fine just like the latest ATI installer....

Which ATI Catalyst driver? Is it more important to download the suite or just the other one?

 

If you want to use the ATI Catalyst suite, make sure the computer has .NET Framework installed (version 1.1 or higher iirc).

As for your question, the Catalyst suite has more features. If you just want the driver then get the other one.

 

The Catalyst Control Center (CCC) requires .NET Framework 2.0 installed.

 

Troublesome ATI video driver !

 

Problem now solved like magic, pc now runs smoother and maybe faster than before... but I still trust the old version that comes with the motherboard..I think it's version 1. I'm worried that I might encounter another problem if I use the latest ATI Catalyst version 7.10.

 

Well, if everything works, there is no need for a new version, which only fix old bugs and adds new, though it also increases Crossfire performance up to 70%.