ATI Display Driver playing hide and seek
November 8, 2011 7:15 PM Subscribe
Help me stop Windows Updates from breaking my display driver software. Windows Vista, ATI Radeon X1270. I've already tried lots of fixes and only one worked, but it happened again after the most recent rounds of updates.
Back in October, my laptop's display driver software was suddenly nonexistent after a bunch of Windows Updates forced a restart. Whenever I start it up, I get one or more errors saying that my display driver needs to be updated or is missing. I am running a 32-bit version of Vista on a Dell Latitude 531 (circa 2008) and the video card is an ATI Radeon X1270. Here are the things I can remember trying:
-Device Manager, right click on the card and pick Update Driver Software... This results in an error, "Windows cannot initialize the device driver for this hardware. (Code 37)"
-Using the ATI (now AMD) driver software from the website to install the correct driver. It tells me it has found the correct one "10-2_legacy_vista-64_wdm.exe" or the same name with "ccc" appended to the end of it. It installs and I get the same error that my display driver needs to be updated or is missing.
-Searching the Dell website for help, which just referred me to AMD.
-An exe on HP's website made to fix this problem worked when this happened last year, but it did not work this time.
-There were no system restore points from before the updates once I remembered to look for them, which may have been 5 days after the problem.
Here's what did work:
A week ago, I got ready to reinstall Vista from another partition on the hard drive named "Recovery". There were other tools in there and one of them was a memory test or scan. I set it to run on restart, it went through my 4gigs twice and when Windows started, all was back to normal. No error and games that would not run before ran again. Great, no need to reinstall. Except now tonight, there were more updates to install. I set a manual restore point this time and then ran the updates. Now I am getting the error again.
I will run the memory test and try the restore point, but I don't want to have to do that whenever there are windows updates. Is there anything else I can do to fix it, or better yet, a way to prevent it?
P.S. I read this previous question. I have restarted a billion times and in case it is relevant, I am running Microsoft Security Essentials.
Back in October, my laptop's display driver software was suddenly nonexistent after a bunch of Windows Updates forced a restart. Whenever I start it up, I get one or more errors saying that my display driver needs to be updated or is missing. I am running a 32-bit version of Vista on a Dell Latitude 531 (circa 2008) and the video card is an ATI Radeon X1270. Here are the things I can remember trying:
-Device Manager, right click on the card and pick Update Driver Software... This results in an error, "Windows cannot initialize the device driver for this hardware. (Code 37)"
-Using the ATI (now AMD) driver software from the website to install the correct driver. It tells me it has found the correct one "10-2_legacy_vista-64_wdm.exe" or the same name with "ccc" appended to the end of it. It installs and I get the same error that my display driver needs to be updated or is missing.
-Searching the Dell website for help, which just referred me to AMD.
-An exe on HP's website made to fix this problem worked when this happened last year, but it did not work this time.
-There were no system restore points from before the updates once I remembered to look for them, which may have been 5 days after the problem.
Here's what did work:
A week ago, I got ready to reinstall Vista from another partition on the hard drive named "Recovery". There were other tools in there and one of them was a memory test or scan. I set it to run on restart, it went through my 4gigs twice and when Windows started, all was back to normal. No error and games that would not run before ran again. Great, no need to reinstall. Except now tonight, there were more updates to install. I set a manual restore point this time and then ran the updates. Now I am getting the error again.
I will run the memory test and try the restore point, but I don't want to have to do that whenever there are windows updates. Is there anything else I can do to fix it, or better yet, a way to prevent it?
P.S. I read this previous question. I have restarted a billion times and in case it is relevant, I am running Microsoft Security Essentials.
Response by poster: I did not see any update that was specifically targeting the display driver. The updates that were installed today are two Security Updates for Vista, Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool and an Update for Windows Mail Junk E-mail Filter.
posted by soelo at 7:54 PM on November 8, 2011
posted by soelo at 7:54 PM on November 8, 2011
Sounds like a coincidence, or possibly a bad hard drive. (Sectors going bad, more likely during updates that write to files that aren't often re-written. I think.) If you boot the computer and hit f12, you should get a boot popup where one of the options is hard drive diagnostics. Worth a shot.
Otherwise, my guess would be that the ATI driver software relies on some Windows component file that is getting updated and breaks the driver. When you update the driver software, it's a newer version that's compatible.
posted by gjc at 6:06 AM on November 9, 2011
Otherwise, my guess would be that the ATI driver software relies on some Windows component file that is getting updated and breaks the driver. When you update the driver software, it's a newer version that's compatible.
posted by gjc at 6:06 AM on November 9, 2011
Can you find the file(s) in question and cacl them to keep the updates from being able to change them? Or at least flag them as "read-only"?
posted by Death by Ugabooga at 7:24 AM on November 9, 2011
posted by Death by Ugabooga at 7:24 AM on November 9, 2011
Response by poster: I used System Restore last night and it did not work; I still get the error. I doubt this is a coincidence since the only two times it happened were immediately after Updates and it has never happened on a regular restart. I have scanned the drive for bad sectors in the past few months, but I am not sure if I have done it since this happened the first time. I will try that, Thanks.
When you update the driver software, it's a newer version that's compatible.
I may be misunderstanding what you're saying, but that is the problem, I can't update the driver software to any version that works.
Where would I look for the file or files behind the display driver? I'd like to be able to check the modified date as well as marking them read-only.
posted by soelo at 9:06 AM on November 9, 2011
When you update the driver software, it's a newer version that's compatible.
I may be misunderstanding what you're saying, but that is the problem, I can't update the driver software to any version that works.
Where would I look for the file or files behind the display driver? I'd like to be able to check the modified date as well as marking them read-only.
posted by soelo at 9:06 AM on November 9, 2011
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but a similar problem I had in Vista ended up only being solved by tossing my ATI card and getting a NVidia. I would try installing new drivers just to be told they couldn't find a valid display, which lead to the driver installer erroring out.
posted by Samizdata at 6:24 PM on November 9, 2011
posted by Samizdata at 6:24 PM on November 9, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
Switch windows update it to download-only, with prompted install. Install all the other things but reject the display driver. Then switch it back to autoinstall updates. The display driver will/should remain rejected and not autoinstall.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 7:19 PM on November 8, 2011