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General discussion

Radeon hardware or driver problem??

Feb 7, 2004 3:54AM PST

I have a Radeon 9600 (built by ATI and not SE or PRO) in an XP Pro machine that, for some reason, does not like the ATI Catalyst drivers after bundle 3.8 (current is 4.1) If I update my drivers, the machine will often reboot before the Welcome screen and post an error message stating "The driver for the display device was unable to complete a drawing operation". I have several notes about this error and no fixes seem to pertain to my problem. I can roll back or reinstall an older driver and all is ok. Curiously, when an older driver is loaded and working without incident, I show 4 monitors in the hardware list. Two are "default" and two are my Sony's. With the newer drivers, I show only one monitor...my Sony which is correct. I can uninstall extra monitors in safe mode and they always come back. Here's the system

Homebuilt w/ASUS P4C800 Deluxe
P4 2.4ghz 800mhz system bus
2 sticks Corsair 512mb PC3200 RAM
Well cooled Antec case w/430w "True Power" PS
WD Raptor 27gig drive on primary SATA controller
2 120g Seagate barracudas on IDE RAID interface
no other add in cards

Monitor is SONY SDM X82 (flat panel) on DVI output

The Radeon card shows as two display adapters, primary and secondary, as it has both DVI and VGA outputs. The list of what I have done to troubleshoot this is too long to post here. I have tried the one memory stick idea and disabled HT in the BIOS but nothing helped. I do not sense any problems with the old drivers and I could leave well enough alone. I am wondering if this could mean I have defective or marginal hardware that more robust drivers might be uncovering. This has gone on through 3 Catalyst bundles and the ATI support site has nothing noted about this being reported. I did report it myself. Any helpful ideas would be appreciated.

Discussion is locked

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Re:Radeon hardware or driver problem??
Feb 7, 2004 4:18AM PST
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Re:Re:Radeon hardware or driver problem??
Feb 7, 2004 7:27AM PST

Thanks, Robert. Yep, I'd already done a Google search and tried Google Groups and others to no avail over the course of a couple months. The error message is well documented but I have not seen much reference to this one during a PC start...mostly is't during game play and I have no interest there. This also does not seem to be confined to one card, chipset or manufacturer. Since most advice seems to be to update drivers, it seemed odd to be taking a reverse track. Thanks again

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Re: I have experienced loop errors with my radeons..
Feb 8, 2004 4:32PM PST

That I ascribe to driver difficulties. I have two radeons. A 7000 in a p3 667 and a 9500 pro in a p4 2.53. The 7000 will not boot at 4x due to a loop error with anything before driver version 3.10 which is the one listed immediately before version 4 on the ati site. Interesting to note their sequence. The 9500 pro experienced it's first loop error and spontaneously rebooted from the desktop a day or so after installing the very same 3.10 version.

I have a friend with a radeon 7500 in a 1.7 ghz p4 who experienced his first loop error when he tried the new 3.10 as well, then he tried 4 later and it happened again.

I don't think you have faulty hardware. I think ATI has issues with its drivers.

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Re:Re: I have experienced loop errors with my radeons../interesting
Feb 9, 2004 9:23AM PST

One of the other errors associated with the error I get refers to being in an infinate loop. I do not know what that is. Most of the posts I have seen in other forums refer to reboots during the PC operation or when playing games. I have found this to not be limited to the Radeon hardware but Nvidia and others are also noted to give the error. I have 3 Radeon cards...a 7500,9200, and the 9600. Only the 9600 started giving this error beginning with the catalyst 3.9 bundle. Again, I only get the error when the system boots. It may be fine or it may reboot several times before going to the desktop. Once its up and running....no problems. I will wait this out through other driver updates for now. I can return to the 3.8 bundle and have no errors. Thanks for taking the time to reply.