Hello there. I just created an account here, because I've got a quite long time problem with my graphics card.
I'll list you all the states of problems I had sofar, as good as I can but first, I'll tell you my specs:
OS: Windows XP Professional x64 (English only; SP2, if that's important)
Graphics Card: ASUS-mod of an ATI Radeon HD 3650
CPU: Intel Pentium D - Dualcore with 3Ghz
RAM: 1,25 GB DDR2
Any other needed things?
Well, here is my problem:
It started about a year ago, with totally random bluescreens ingame and one program, where I was able to reproduce them after each time. The message of the Bluescreen always varied but occationally, it mentioned the
atidurag.dll.
The program where those where reproducable is an opensource 3Dprogram, you can find here:
blender.org - Home *
and the crash happened, when I highlit any of the menus. (I could perfectly fine alter the cube you'll see on startup without problems, as long as I don't highlight one of the menus or as long as I don't use a hotkey which gives a pop up)
That part was with my previous graphics card and I hoped to solve it with buying a new one - the one right now... but it didn't help much: The program mentioned above still got bluescreens. Games gave them rarer than before but they still appeared from time to time.
Then, I tried with a driver-update - I had the standard ASUS-driver, which also includes a modified CatalystControlCenter (CCC) and some overclocking tools, which I didn't touch.
Directly on the ASUSTek-support-page, they had a newer driver which I tried, which didn't help either.
Later, not too long ago, I found out, which actual ATI-card this is. So, I went to the ATI-site and downloaded the newest driver available.
First, it said that the setup didn't find a matching driver and "it'll stop the installation". -Inspite of that, it installed the corresponding version of CCC.
After a bit of searching, I found out that I could force the driver update and if it didn't work, I could simply roll back the driver.
So, I forced the driver installation and voíla, it worked! No crashes, no bluescreens!
Though, CCC didn't. - whenever the system (autostart) or I tried to start CCC, an error-message poped up, informing me, that some adress, related to MOM, wasn't found, or something alike.
After some retries, I did it like that:
I started the driver install to the point where it told me, the driver wasn't found. Then, I manually forced a driver install and only then I pressed ok to go on with the CCC-installation.
After restart, there was no message. Nor was there a CCC-tray-icon.
So, I tried to manually restart CCC, which gave me yet an other message: "only advanced mode is available with that graphics port" or something, with the options "start advanced mode" and "cancel".
Well, I used to always be in advanced mode so I didn't mind that. Though, after clicking that button, nothing happened. I tried to directly go to advanced mode, which did exactly nothing - neither that nor any other error, nor a starting CCC.
Even worse, I then tried to run the crashing program, which by now is my test-program for that and...
...a BLUESCREEN again!
Something changed though: I then tried to run games. They did not give me a bluescreen anymore. Instead, they just crashed, more or less as soon as they started (a few secs after the intro-vids where over, so, as soon as I would have been able to click a menu)
The pro was, they crashed without taking the whole system down, the con, though, they did so, all the time.
After that, as I now guessed that all those crashes are related to CCC, I simply deinstalled it, keeping only the blank driver. That's where I am now. This didn't change anything :S
* happens with all the versions of it, besides the newest, unfinished one, which is a total recode. That version (Version 2.5 - you can find builds of current state there:
GraphicAll.org - By Blenderheads for Blenderheads! ) only gave me a bluescreen once, when I started the so-called "sculpt-mode". To prevent you from needing to learn the program, that's a mode, where you can modify the geometry you have built sofar as if it was clay, more or less. It's one of the most intense operations possible, gpu-usage-wise. In general, that's the only clue that I could give, which probably doesn't tell much, the bluescreens happen, whenever the surroundings get rather complex.
Else, in current form, it crashes without taking down the system from time to time, while using medium-complexity-operations.
In between, I tried to run the program over a virtual machine (via vmware 1.0
VMware Cloud Computing with Virtualization, Green IT, Virtual Machine & Servers , running on the same OS ) on a Linux Ubuntu-ish distro, and everything works fine without crash or bluescreen, besides being quite slow due to the double OS XP x64->vmware->Linux Mint (32bit) (the name of the used distro) - though, if I ever want to play a game again, I of course can't totaly switch to Linux... I need to get it to work on Windows.
Short summary of current state:
Most recent driver for ATI Radeon HD 3600 Series, CCC deinstalled.
Games crash on startup.
Blender (the 3D-program) either closes (2.5 - not even pre-alpha ) or gives bluescreens (2.49a and earlier - both x32 and x64)
Oh, and just to let you know, the games I used aren't some highend overkill games. I don't have such.
They're games like Sims2 or Spore, which should work easily and also did, during that MOM-adressing-problem.
Ok, I hope, someone out there has an idea... Btw, I forgot to mention before, inbetween I also tried to totally re-setup the OS, with no effect either.
Full of hope awaiting an answer:
Kram
PS: any other needed info? pls ask
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