Catalyst "Upgrade" option

Buddahpest

I apologize if this has been asked before. Is it acceptable to use the upgrade option within the Catalyst setup options, or should I still be doing a uninstall/reinstall?

I'm not sure if doing the upgrade would be a "dirty" install.

rhyinem

You can go right ahead and install overtop of your old drivers. The installer is designed to remove the old versions for you before installing the new.

Matth

Over any? or just over 7.x ?

Been indoctrinated with the remove / install procedure for so long, just as I used to find that Nvidia's "SETUP" tended to work better that way, but I always preferred to "bust" the archive and do a device manager update using INF, as that always seemed to work more cleanly.

Mind you, I grew up with "unzip, update device, point at driver location" and consider it to be the only "proper" way to install a driver... applications have SETUP, drivers have INF's.

Dyre Straits

I've been doing 'update' driver installs for years. The only real requirement is that you answer YES to any overwrite prompt.

If you decide to revert to a much earlier version of drivers, then, in that case, I'd recommend uninstalling the current drivers, rebooting, then proceed to install your version of choice.

I really do think too many people make too much of an issue re: uninstalling current drivers. If any problem does occur, there's always the drivercleaner option to use. However, in my own experience, about the only time I've ever HAD problems was after using drivercleaner. Not sure why, but, in those cases I kept getting a 'No VGA adapter installed' type error.

temeteus82

I did that from CAT 7.2 to 7.3 and got 640x480 16 colors after boot. And I wasn't able to change it. So removed all drivers and ccc and used DC to make sure. Then CAT 7.3 worked.

RoyBatty

Same here. I tried to install 7.3 over 7.2 after reading what rhyinem and Dyre said, but I think i'll stick to the DriverCleaner method...

temeteus82

I'm glad that I'm not alone with this...

Dalton Sleeper

I always:

• remove everything from the "add & remove" (incl ati tray tools if there)
• run cat uninstaller
• reboot
• run drivercleaner (all ati but IGP, it'll delete your sata drivers)
• reboot
• install new drivers without CCC
• reboot
• install ati tray tools
• done!

I've had to many driver issues under all years so now i always follow this list.

rhyinem

AMEN Dyre... In my experience, the driver cleaner is actually what causes that "install vga adapter first" error that alot of people get. So they use driver cleaner to fix the problem and it just ends up happening. That and using driver cleaner in safe mode just confuses me. You can just install Cat driver over top of the old one, they are designed to do just that. If you actually have a problem after that, you can then uninstall via add/remove, reboot and reinstall. All of the crazy steps that people do these days just to update their drivers seems a bit much...

That's my opinon though..

Cheers!

Lunde

i too stick with the drivercleaner way when installing new drivers.
yesterday i (tried to ) install the latest 7.3 drivers (official) on top of the official 7.2 cat's
setup reported a servere error cant continue bal bla bla,please install vga standard driver and run this setup again.
never seen this kind of behaviour before,did what i allways have done,install new official cat's ontop of older official cat's.
besides that,it disconnected my gpu (red x in system hardware) could not remove the drivers,finally i had to use system restore to go back where my 7.2 drivers were working,then use the add/remove programms to remove the old ati drivers,reboot then it installed the standard vga compatible driver by itself,after that i could install the 7.3 drivers without a hitch. man what went wrong there i don't know but now i allways use the uninstall option first,then the drivercleaner in safemode move.

just my experience with ati's

temeteus82

Well, I did that and it didn't work, I was unable to change resolution from 640x480 16 colors.... Didn't have any windows errors just couldn't change resolution and color depth... And normally (when DC used) it takes about 5 min to upgrade drivers. So that not so big deal for me anyways...

junka

I think there was something nasty left over from the 7.2, when I was uninstalling the 7.2 I got a BSOD, but all was fine with the 7.3 install.

OldBuzzard

It appears to have worked for me

Way back when I got my 9500 Pro, I had lots of problems installing the ATI drivers, and after many failures, I finally found that uninstalling the CP/CCC only, re-booting, and then installing CCC worked fine.

This time I made a 'Sacraficial' version of my main OS with HyperOS, and used it to test with. Gotta love HyperOS for doing things like this. Lets me experiment without the risk of buggering up my OS, and making a re-install necessary