ATI Radeon 9000 driver uninstallation problem

[joea64]

I ran into a (temporarily, I hope) showstopping problem a couple of weeks back when I tried to uninstall the version 3.6 Catalyst drivers that the computer shop had put onto my machine while installing a new motherboard. (Why would I want to uninstall the latest ATI drivers, some of you may be asking? Because they don't play well together with my video capture/recording software, that's why.)

Anyway, when I took my earlier attempt at uninstalling the Catalyst drivers, I went through Add/Remove Programs, since ATI doesn't, AFAIK, provide an uninstaller program. That part went OK, and I rebooted and came back in to a system running in standard VGA (640 x 480 x 16). At that point, I tried to install an older Catalyst version that I had downloaded from the archives at ATI's site; what I really wanted to do was to install the original drivers from the CD, but at that time I couldn't find the CD.

So...when I tried to install a new set of drivers, I got partway through the installation process (how far, I don't remember), when the install crashed out with an error message in this format:

"INFSetup caused error (or general protection fault) in xxxxxxxxx.exe" (I don't remember what the exact file name was, but Googling for possible explanations turns up krnl386.exe and infsetup.exe as locales for the error.)

I tried several different versions of the ATI driver suite, but got the same error each time, and finally was forced to restore my system from a backup.

Now, I'm ready to try again, because I've finally found the original driver CD, and I've also found a freeware program called Driver Cleaner that's supposed to be able to clean out every trace of ATI (and nVidia) drivers from your system. What I want to know basically is, has anyone else here encountered this problem while uninstalling/reinstalling ATI drivers, and if so, what did you do about it?

(System specs are in my signature, but if you can't read that far, Windows 98 SE, Radeon 9000 128MB AGP).

-Joe-

[killercow]

Can you try booting in safe mode and running the program then installing the drivers again?

[joea64]

As a matter of fact,that's exactly what the instructions for Driver Cleaner say to do (uninstalling the drivers first, then booting sto Safe Mode and running the program, then rebooting to Normal Mode and installing the new drivers). For some reason, the program's readme says to disconnect from the net before uninstalling the old drivers.

-Joe-

[ski]

Read 'Response 10' here for a possible solution:
http://www.computing.net/drivers/wwwboard/forum/3337.html

[ErnieK]

Joe
ATI recommendation for installation is NOT to reboot inbetween un-installing and installing new drivers. But as you are going backward with driver version this might not relate to you. And yes you can install the downloaded file from safe mode and they will come into effect when re-boot.

Ski's link likes good info for future reference. Let us know if you try and succeed with it please.

[joea64]

I'll do that, Ernie. I'd already found the Computing.net thread referenced in this thread and copied the post in question to a text file on my own system so that I'll have something to reference if I run into that error with INFSETUP again when I try installing the drivers. I didn't know that ATI recommends *not* rebooting between uninstallation and reinstallation, but somehow, it figures. I had better make sure to do a system backup first so that I don't have to waste time having to reinstall everything if something unrecoverable should go wrong; I may do that later this evening.

-Joe-

[joea64]

OK, it's done. Following what Ernie told me, I uninstalled the ATI suite (display driver, Multimedia Center and Control Panel) without rebooting, then immediately installed the Radeon 9000's original drivers from the CD I had on hand (which, of course, is the one that came with the card). The install process went perfectly, and when I did reboot the desktop came up in the same resolution and color depth as I had had prior to uninstall/reinstall.

I'm not quite out of the woods yet because I'm still having problems with video capture. I have an AVerTV PCI video capture card (similar to a Hauppauge WinTV GO card, in fact, it has the same Conexant BT878 chipset) and use PowerVCR II to record MPEG clips. After some fiddling (and reinstalling PowerVCR), both the AVerTV application and PowerVCR II will work, more or less, but the MPEG clips PowerVCR II records are useless because they're drastically speeded-up - they run at several multiples of normal speed. I don't know why that should be.

I'm wondering if it might have anything to do with DirectX; those silly people at the computer shop also went and installed DirectX 9.0a on my system. The only way I have heard of to clear DirectX off a Win9x system without a reinstall is to use a program called DirectX Eradicator; this program is now in the 2nd beta of version 1.09, and will, supposedly, safely clean anything from DX 2 to DX 9 off any flavor of Windows. However, I have no independent confirmation as to how well it works, or if in fact it works; has anyone here ever tried it?

-Joe-

[ErnieK]

Joe
There are issues with DX9a so try and get DX9b and upgrade to deal with these issues. Try this link http://public.www.planetmirror.com/pub/microsoft/directx/directx9b/

9b is near the bottom

[joea64]

I just downloaded DX 9.0b, but I did some research and it appears that 9.0b has video-capture issues of its own, particularly with NTSC-Japan and PAL-based cards. The issues are so serious, in fact, that Microsoft is working on a priority update to 9.0b. I don't know if this will affect NTSC-based systems, but frankly, I'm leaning toward trying DirectX Eradicator and backing out to DX 8.1. (I think part of the problem is that the R9000 may not be DX9-compatible, so it might not work with 9.0b anyway.)

-Joe-

[ErnieK]

Hi Joe
Did not know about the probs with 9b. I have it installed and have no probs with my ATI Radeon (vivo) on a fat32 system

[mjc]

The problem is that 9b is to patch a major security hole....so I guess you are damned if you and quite likely also if you don't.

[joea64]

MJC, do you know what that "security hole" is? I haven't noticed any particular security problems (apart from the continuing tidal wave of SoBig.F-infected emails) on my system, but then I have a pretty good software firewall (Sygate Personal Firewall) installed.

-Joe-

[joea64]

I did a backup and then ran DirectX Eradicator 1.09 (beta 2) to get rid of DX 9.0a. That operation was successful, and when I rebooted, I re-installed DX 8.1 without any trouble. I haven't tested video capture yet (I have a football game to watch), but I have my hopes.

-Joe-

[mjc]

The flaw, which received Microsoft’s highest severity rating, involves the way DirectX handles MIDI music files. A malformed MIDI file could overrun the buffer in DirectX, at which point extra software embedded in the file would be executed.
Exploiting the flaw would entail the creation of a maliciously malformed MIDI file, which vulnerable Windows users would have to be tricked into running, either through e-mail or a Web page.


Microsoft alert notice (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS03-030.asp)

[joea64]

I'm still having problems with video capture :( . I am posting this in a separate thread, since the Radeon 9000 driver problem itself has been solved.

-Joe-