Drivers "gone" after a couple of reboots

makaio

Hi!

I am having problems running the Omega drivers on my newly installed system (Win XP Home on Compaq 905 EA laptop). They have been running on the very same machine before. But here's the complete story:

I first uninstalled the ATI Control Panel and Drivers supplied by my manufacturer. I then rebooted my computer.

Back in the system I started the Omega driver setup. I used the same installer as on my old system. I later tried the latest release as well. Both ran without any problems. I did the necessary reboot and set up my display options as desired. (I'm using the Omegas primarily to support my additional HP display's pivot function).

Everything runs smoothly - until I do the next reboot. As soon as the Windows login screen appears I'm down to 640x480 @ 4 bits. When I look at the display options I can neither change the screen resolution nor the color depth. The Omega control panel in the additional settings is "gone".

Does anyone have an explanation for this? The only change I made (involuntarily) is that my system drive's label is now F.. But that shouldn't have any effect, should it?

Any help is much appreciated. TIA

Matthias

Dyre Straits

This will definitely have an affect if the drivers are looking to the normal C:\ system drive.

Just out of curiosity, why was this done? I'm surprised there aren't other problems.

makaio

Well, I set up a dual boot system with Linux. As I installed the latter first (and thus did all the partitioning before instllaing Windows), the Windows installation procedure recognized all partitions and labeled them accordingly. And so my Windows partition was given the name "F" ;-)

Don't particularly like it either - and I know by now that installing Windows first might have been the better idea - but that's the way it is now.

But as far as your remark, that there should be more trouble, is concerned: I don't think so. I really do not have any Windows programming background. But the way I interpret what I have experienced so far as a user of this OS - as long as all environment variables linking to a "C:\..." path are changed accordingly - I don't see why any well programmed software should cause any trouble, as it should be able to make everything work flawlessly by using the %SYSTEMDIR% variable.

So much for the explanation. But do you have any ideas if the drivers are using absolute paths? My flash drive is now recognized as C:. I am pretty sure I had in inserted during at least one of the (drivers') installs, but no files were written to it.

H3X4D3C1M4L

You could always fix that, instead of using GRUB or LILO or even NTLDR for your boot manager, you could use Smart Boot Manager (Google for it, can't remember site).

That thing boots ANY O/S and does auto partition hiding etc (which is good unless you have an EXT2/3 mounter for Windows XP).

redsolar

Drivers do not use hard paths during installation and should not use them when booting up, but changing partitions may change pretty much anything you can think of.

Uninstall the drivers, clean them out, and reinstall them, and you should be good to go.

When you install new drivers, it's recommended you stick with the following scheme:
1. Download latest version of DriverCleaner Pro
2. Install DriverCleaner Pro
3. Go to Control Panel, and Remove anything ATI related. This includes any drivers, and preferrably all the tools (ATITool, ATI Tray Tools, RadLinker)
4. Reboot, while rebooting, tap on F8 key, to get the Windows startup menu. Once you have gotten into it, select "Safe Mode" or "Safe Mode with Networking" (if you use a domain to log in).
5. Once in Safe Mode, run DriverCleaner Pro, tick "Select Multiple Filters" checkbox, and add everything that starts with "ATI", except "ATI IGP" components. Hit "Clean"
5.1. IF you have not done so before, run "Cab Cleaner" from DriverCleaner Pro as well - this will get rid of any Windows default drivers that may interfere down the road.
6. Reboot into normal mode, and install the new drivers
6.1. If you have issues with third party drivers, like OmegaDrivers, also try ATI's official drivers. On a mobile platform, use DH Mobility Modder, as ATI does not officially provide drivers for all notebooks at this time.
7. Reboot one more time
8. Test your applications.

makaio

I ran DriverCleaner as well as CabCleaner. According to the log DriverCleaner did what it was supposed to. But it didn't help much. Right after I had installed the Omega drivers and rebooted, my system automatically loaded my old settings from the last time I had used the Omega drivers. (I noticed because of the 90-degree rotation without having touched the settings ;-)). After a couple of reboots the same old problems prevailed.

I've given up on running the Omgas for the moment, but I caught myself some extra trouble, apparently due to my running CabCleaner. My media players - except for VLC - can't play any media anymore. WMP, Media Player Classic and BSPlayer all try to open media files (mpg, avi), but return errors. My WMP browser plugin also refuses to stream content. What could have caused this, and what can I do to get everything back to normal. I am missing out on Kobe's 81 here!

TIA

Matthias