andrewducker: (reaper)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2005-10-09 03:47 pm
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I seem to have fucked things up

I installed the latest ATI drivers, having previously uninstalled the old set.

What I hadn't bargained on, was that the old set were Omega drivers - produced by a 3rd party, and thus there seems to be some kind of horrible incompatability going on.  The two main symptoms of which are a "Cannot load low level device driver" error on startup, and Half Life 2 crashing intermittently on me.

I'm now going to spend an hour playing with it, before deciding that it's just fucked and reinstalling Windows.
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[identity profile] robhu.livejournal.com 2005-10-09 03:17 pm (UTC)(link)
Might it be worth putting the old Omega drivers on?
ext_8559: Cartoon me (Default)

What robhu said ...

[identity profile] the-magician.livejournal.com 2005-10-09 03:26 pm (UTC)(link)
... it's perfectly possible to start up Windows in Safe Mode (VGA, blech!) or even command line and reinstall the old video drivers without having to do an entire reinstall (unless you find reinstalls quick and painless, which I don't).

[identity profile] derumi.livejournal.com 2005-10-09 05:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Un-install your video card from the Device Manager, restart, and force it to use your old Omega drivers when it re-installs your video card. You do have your old drivers handy?

If you're running XP, that's:
Start->Run->devmgmt.msc
or open System in your Control Panel, and open the Device Manager from the Hardware tab.

Is this FAQ section of any help?

[identity profile] terminalmalaise.livejournal.com 2005-10-09 07:21 pm (UTC)(link)
RADEON OMEGA DRIVERS F.A.Q.

What is the full uninstall procedure I must follow if I want to remove the XX drivers from my system?
Before you start this full uninstall procedure, make sure you have downloaded and installed the latest version of Driver Cleaner; if you are using my drivers then a special version of Driver Cleaner is already included.

1. Go to the Windows Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs section.
2. Uninstall the ATI Control Panel or Catalyst Control Center, don’t restart.
3. If uninstalling the Omega Drivers, uninstall Radlinker (if using an old driver set).
4. Uninstall the existing driver set, restart.
5. Boot your PC in safe mode.
6. Run Driver Cleaner, restart afterwards.
7. If uninstalling the Omega Drivers, now uninstall the Setup Tools from the Start Menu.
8. Now you can install any driver you like.

I uninstalled the drivers, But why does the Windows keeps finding the Omega Drivers even after using Driver Cleaner and/or clearing the registry?
There are some files that Windows saves for backup purposes that cannot be removed by any means, except manually, here is how to find them and remove them:

1. Open Windows Explorer and go to the "Windows\Inf" folder.
2. Do a search inside it for "A word or phrase in a file", type OMEGA and click search.
3. In the search results box delete all the files with the name "OEM##.INF", where ## can be any number...
4. Now remove the video card(s) from the Windows Device Manager and restart.

After restart Windows will now detect and use a Standard VGA, after that you can install any driver set.
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