Cannot install Catalyst Control Center w/ 7.11 and Thinkpad A30P

Bloho Jo · Dec 5, 2007, 10:24 AM

I had an older IBM Thinkpad A30P (chip is "ATI MOBILITY RADEON") with the ATI Catalyst Converter 6.x (I now forget which version exactly) and the ATI Driver installed on it. I had originally installed it a couple years ago with the DHMod tool and it worked great. Operating system is Windows XP SP2.

Last night I wanted to update the ATI Driver and CCC to 7.11. I uninstalled the ATI software both manually and also using Driver Cleaner. It was a real bitch because the latest inf files for the chipset on the Thinkpad A30P apparently don't have any enumeration for a Standard VGA or Standard PCI Graphics adapter, so Windows XP ran with the "VGASave" service. This seemed to conflict with the IDE bus and it caused frequent lockups and instability.

Despite that, I was able to follow the instructions and extract the ATI 7.11 setup files for XP, then run the DH Mobility Modder version 0.8.8.0. It patched the 7.11 setup files with no errors.

After that, I was able to install the ATI drivers, but for some reason it is not installing the Catalyst Control Center. The install runs for the Catalyst Control Center and appears to complete successfully with no errors. But after rebooting, there is no "ATI Catalyst Control Center" option on the Display Properties or Start Menu, and CLI.exe is nowhere on the hard drive. If I run the CCC installer again, it acts like it's installed, and has options for "Modify," "Repair," and "Uninstall." "Repair" doesn't fix the problem, neither does "Modify," and doing an "Uninstall" then installing just the CCC installer also gives the same results.

Direct3D acelleration is not working, Warcraft III no longer starts:

Here's the directory contents of c:\program files\ati technologies:

http://tommycatkins.com/ati711_dir.txt

I'm open to any ideas whatsoever.

Should I try an earlier version? If so, which one?

Bloho Jo · Dec 6, 2007, 12:39 PM

I had originally thought something on my system was corrupted (such as the enumeration) and that's why Direct3D wasn't active, but I realized that the drivers had in fact installed successfully, and due to some kind of incompatibility, Direct3D is not able to work with the newest DH Modded Catalyst drivers on the IBM Thinkpad A30P... "DDI Version" for some reason comes up as "Unknown."

I completely uninstalled the DH Modded ATI Drivers 7.11, and installed the latest Omega Drivers. Those installed successfully but didn't work either:

I think went to the Omega Drivers Archive and downloaded the next-to-previous version (Catalyst 7.9.1). The results were the same as above; Direct3D was still not working.

I kept uninstalling (in safe mode) the Omega Drivers and then installing the next previous version down the list, and continued to get the same results, until I got to Catalyst 6.7. That blue screened the system when it switched to 1600 x 1200 @ 60 hz.

Finally, when I installed Omega Drivers 3.8.252 (Catalyst 6.5), Direct3D now worked and everything appears to test and function properly:

I don't know if the fact that no Catalyst version over 6.5 will work on the IBM Thinkpad A30P is due to an incompatibility with the IBM A30P notebook, or if it's due to a bug in the drivers after Catalyst version 6.5. Anyway, it looks like I can't run any version over that on this laptop, which isn't a big deal because it's outdated anyways.

For what it's worth, this is what Device Manager reports for the IBM A30P motherboard:

For some reason, Windows XP SP2 detects an "unknown" device related to the ATI MOBILITY RADEON. It's unable to find any drivers for whatever it is. I don't know if this is related to any of the above issues or not:

Dyre Straits · Dec 6, 2007, 12:51 PM

I have two thoughts about your issues:

1. The IBM Thinkpad's installed video adapter likely pre-dates DirectX 9. ATI stopped supporting pre-DX9 video cards with the 6.5 version of drivers. That likely explains why the 6.5's are working and nothing newer does.

2. The Unknown Device is likely the WDM drivers. You should download the matching version of WDM drivers from ATI's Legacy Drivers and install that version.

Good luck and let us know if the issues get resolved.

Bloho Jo · Dec 6, 2007, 02:10 PM

Yes, Thinkpad A30/P predates DX9. I didn't know however that ATI's final version for such hardware was 6.5, so that explains that. Thanks!

Do I really need WDM? What is it exactly? Isn't that just for TV/Video?

Bloho Jo · Dec 6, 2007, 02:36 PM

I downloaded the ATI Catalyst 6.5 drivers and the DH Mod Tool 0.8.8.0, extracted the ATI 6.5 Drivers, ran the DH Mod Tool successfully on them, then ran "setup.exe" in the WDM folder. (Not sure if the DH Modder touches the WDM folder or not.) After rebooting, Windows doesn't detect any hardware for the "Unknown" device. I tried doing a "reinstall driver" using automatic detection... that had no effect. Then I tried doing it by pointing device manager specifically to the two folders with INF files in the WDM folder... that also had no effect.

Dyre Straits · Dec 6, 2007, 04:24 PM

Try simply removing the Unknown Device and then reboot. See if Windows still throws up a fit about it.

Also, check to see if you have both a Primary and Secondary Display Adapter listed. There should be two devices listed there. If not, it could well be that your rig isn't properly detecting the Secondary Display Device.

Good luck!