Scali

Okay... I got a Club3D Radeon 9600Pro 128 mb a few months ago... Nothing fancy, should just be a regular reference design board, with regular ATi bios.

So I put it in my PC (Athlon XP1800+, Windows XP sp1, 512 mb, MSI K7T Turbo board with VIA KT133A chipset) and started installing the included drivers (I believe they were 4.3 or so)...
Everything appeared to work fine, until I rebooted after the installation... I got a warning from the ATi control panel program that it couldn't start because the drivers weren't installed properly.
Apparently Windows was using the VgaSave driver, and not the installed Radeon drivers... I have no idea why this is, since in Device Manager, I see two Radeon devices (primary and secondary), and both report the proper drivers installed, no errors reported, and the device enabled.

Okay, weird... So I tried downloading the latest Catalyst (4.6 at the time), and tried installing that instead. Same thing.
I tried a few more, and miraculously enough, Catalyst 3.4 worked. At least I could use my videocard now! The card appeared to work fine... but the drivers were rather buggy, so I wasn't all that happy, knowing that these bugs were already fixed in the drivers I could not install.

Then someone suggested using Omega drivers... and indeed, these drivers worked fine. First I used the ones based on 4.6, and later I updated to 4.7, no problem.
So anyway, when I knew that my hardware was working properly, I started experimenting. I installed a fresh Windows XP on a new partition, and tried to install the Catalyst drivers in various ways... With sp1 installed, without... with the latest VIA 4in1 drivers installed, without... Also trying to analyse the difference between Omega and Catalyst from the .inf files, and changing some registry settings... I even tried flashing a different bios into the card, since I thought that perhaps the drivers didn't recognize it.
But nothing I did could make the ATi drivers install properly, while the Omega drivers always worked fine, even with fastwrites enabled.

I then realized that I still had an old partition with Windows 98 on it, and I tried installing the drivers there... The Catalyst 4.7 drivers installed right away, without a problem. That is what makes it even more strange... Apparently the issue only occurs in Windows XP.

So anyway, for a while I reluctantly used the Omega drivers, and just gave up trying to find the problem... I did report the issue to ATi though. But they never responded. And I did try Catalyst 4.8 to see if it was fixed, but apparently it wasn't. So I reported it again, and waited for the Omega drivers to be updated to 4.8 aswell.

And that's where I am now... The Omega 4.8 drivers have the same problem as the regular ATi drivers now... so now I really am stuck.
Since I code Direct3D stuff on this PC in my spare time, I would really appreciate access to the latest drivers, since they enable the geometry instancing feature.
But as it looks now, the only way I can get the drivers to install, is to either buy another videocard, or buy another PC and put this card in. I don't feel like wasting money on either. I just want this to work, until it is time to upgrade again.

So I would really appreciate it if someone knew the answer to this problem... And if any ATi driver developers read this, perhaps they can contact me, so we can pinpoint the problem and eliminate it.

Omegadrive

Try this, install my drivers based on the Cat 4.7, look at the card's ID TAG and EXACT name in the device manager.
Post both here, I'll check if something changed, but I doubt it since I used the same installation IDs of the Cat 4.7 in the new set.

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GOD BLESS YOU ALL!

Scali

Do you mean the "Device Instance ID" under details?
That is for the primary:
"PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4150&SUBSYS_2066148C&REV_00\4&9A EDED5&1&0008"
and:
"PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4170&SUBSYS_2067148C&REV_00\4&9A EDED5&1&0108"
for the secondary.

I'm not sure what you mean by exact name either... I suppose that is the name shown for the device in the tree?
That is for the primary:
"RADEON 9600 Series (Omega 2.5.58)"
and:
"RADEON 9600 Series Secondary (Omega 2.5.58)"
for the secondary.

L00P

I have the same problem as Scali has.
I got a Powercolor Radeon 9600 Pro SE.
It seems, that this problem occurs on 9600 Pros "powered by Ati"-cards.

I hope that Omega can fix this problem in the next release of omegadriver. You're doing a great work, man!

My ID's:

"PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4150&SUBSYS_20661002&REV_00\4&B5 FB279&0&0008"
and:
"PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4170&SUBSYS_20671002&REV_00\4&B5 FB279&0&0008"

that means:
device-ID: 4150
supplier-ID: 1002
subsystem-ID: 2066

name:
RADEON 9600 Series (Omega 2.5.67)
Radeon 9600 Series Secondary (omega 2.5.67)

I'll install now - as you proposed - the Omega 2.5.58 based on Catalyst 4.7 drivers. Powercolor recommends to use the omegadrivers for their cards, that means you can ask them for donations, Omega ...

L00P

Scali

Ah, is it a common problem? Have you heard of other people having it too?
And does it affect all these 9600 Pro cards then, or only some?
ATi had better fix it then.

But if it is a rather common problem, is there some known fix?

Omegadrive

Well, I checked the installer and all involved files and the card IS there, so I don't know what may be happening on your PCs, try updating the drives through the device manager and after the restart, run the normal setup.

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L00P

I've heard about this, that some people with "powered by Ati"-cards only can use the Omegadrivers. It concerns Ati Radeons 9x00 series ... The original Catalyst drivers can't be used.

Now I installed the 2.5.58 (Catalyst 4.7) drivers. After reboot some problems occured: the colors were not displayed correctly. The control panel was loaded and I controlled all adjustments, but I couldn't find any wrong configs.

Then I tried the 2.5.51. It worked fine, but there were graphic errors in some games, e.g. generals zero hour (it glitters/flickers).

The last "stable" version seems to be the Catalyst 3.4 (omega 2.4.43). Don't know why ... patches or fixes are not available.

L00P
******************
Athlon XP 2400+,
Ati-Radeon 9600 Pro EZ
512 MB RAM
160 GB HDD
WinXP SP2
DX9.0c

L00P

I did so. And I've considered the installation guide from Genius. The setup routine recognizes the card correctly and in the device manager it is shown as "RADEON 9600 series". But the control panel doesn't work and in the properties the driver is "VGA save", not Omega...

L00P

Scali

Well, as I tried to explain before, it looks like the drivers are installed properly, also with Omega 4.8... In device manager, everything looks exactly the same as with Omega 4.7, or any Catalyst... The difference is just that for some reason, the drivers are not used as the display device. It still uses VgaSave.
No matter what I install, or how I install it. Perhaps it's because the drivers are loaded, and they fail to initialize properly... but then it's odd that device manager or event viewer don't show any traces of a failure...
Perhaps it's just a bad registry setting that somehow only occurs on certain PCs.
I get these devnode flags:
DN_DRIVER_LOADED
DN_STARTED
DN_DISABLEABLE
DN_NT_ENUMERATOR
DN_NT_DRIVER

That seems to indicate that the device is indeed installed properly and functioning. I can even hibernate my PC, which afaik is not possible with the VgaSafe driver... so it looks like they do something... But they are just not enabled as primary display or something... If only I knew why that was, or how to fix it... It's strange enough that the Omega drivers used to work, while the regular Catalysts didn't, since the binaries are unmodified, right?

I wish ATi would contact me, so this annoying bug can be fixed. But reporting the bug to the Catalyst team twice is apparently not enough to get their attention.

Scali

By the way, L00P, what are the specs of your PC? I'm wondering if it is perhaps related to certain motherboards or chipsets.
(I know plenty of people with other motherboards who have no problems with any Radeon models, so I suspect my KT133A chipset).

Judas

BTW.... which verison of the Via 4in1's are you using... for that kind of old chipset, you may have to resort to an older version.. it's listed on www.viaarena.com site...

__________________

Scali

I've used both 4.51 and 4.53 with this card. They both work fine with Omega 4.7. And I've used 4.51 for quite some time with my previous card, a GeForce2 GTS, which also never gave any problems whatsoever.
I also used 4.51 in Windows 98SE. So I am pretty sure that the VIA drivers themselves don't have a problem. But it could be that somehow the ATi drivers fail with these drivers, I haven't tried any old drivers, and I would really like to avoid that, since VIA had a lot of problems with this chipset in the old days.

There just seems to be something funky between these ATi drivers and my PC. And I am quite sure it is in the installer, and not in the hardware itself, since the card has worked flawlessly ever since I managed to get any drivers actually installed properly.
And the GeForce2 has also worked flawlessly for years, while I have upgraded drivers for my chipset and videocard many times, and even upgraded my motherboard BIOS a few times.

Anyway, VIA apparently recommends v4.43 for my chipset... They mention responsiveness as an issue though, nothing about compatibility.
I will give them a try, just in case.

edit:
Nope, these drivers didn't change anything. Catalyst 4.8 still won't install... Didn't bother to try Omega 4.8... Just put 4.7 back on.

Scali

The plot thickens...
I have swapped Radeons with my brother.
I am now using his Built-by-ATi Radeon 8500 with 64 mb, and he is now using my Club3D Radeon 9600Pro with 128 mb.

Two interesting things occured:
1) On my computer, the Catalyst v4.9 drivers now installed without any problems.
2) On his computer, the Catalyst v4.9 refused to work in the exact same way as mine. And again only Omega's would work. No Catalyst ever failed on his PC when he had the Radeon 8500 installed though.

Unlike my cheap imitation computer, he has a 'reference' PC, with Intel i845E chipset, Pentium 4 2.4 GHz CPU and everything first-class.
So the VIA chipset can no longer be used as an excuse... Apparently the card itself is the only factor of influence.
Now I just need some answers from ATi.... Why do the Omega drivers and really old Catalysts work, but not the new ones? Why is there no "Powered by ATi Radeon 9600Pro" choice on their tech support forum?
Are these cards somehow unofficial, and are they deliberately disabled in the Catalyst drivers?
Whatever is going on here, I want some answers, and my money back. I spent months of installing and uninstalling drivers and shit, for nothing. And ATi has not responded to me ONCE.

Scali

Update: I tried the new Omega drivers, just in case... It could have been a fluke that 4.8 didn't install.
And luckily for me, it was!
So Omega 4.9 again installs on my PC, I still don't know why, but since I still have recent drivers now, I don't really care as much