Point of fact: the computer was fine prior to the video driver upgrade.
Conclusion: video driver is bad.
Solution: drop back to previous version of video driver.
Complication: AMD/ATI do not offer the previous version, and I can't find my install CD.
I searched on Google until I found oldapps.com, a worthwhile site that fills in the chasm left by negligent hardware manufacturers.
Dropping back to a driver released last year solved my problem. The version of the good, working driver is 8.771, dated 8-25-2010. The ATI Install file is "ATI Catalyst Driver version 10.9."
Hardware manufacturers such as ATI fail to thoroughly test their drivers and fail to offer older versions of their drivers. Once I see a manufacturer's brand name on a blue screen of death, that tends to stay in my memory forever. The BSOD informed me that the driver was stuck in an infinite loop, which smacks of sloppy programming.
Nota Bene: although the old driver is better, it may be a good idea to disable its "ATI Hotkey Poller" service to avoid unexplained crashes.
Update: In retrospect, I recommend that everyone who has embedded video graphics in their motherboard use only the video driver provided by their motherboard manufacturer. Since reinstalling Windows and installing the video driver provided by the motherboard manufacturer, I have had no problems. Don't second-guess the motherboard manufacturer and don't worry about having the latest version of the driver. Although a new version from the ATI web site will install without any warning or problem and may even give a performance boost, it may not play nice with your combo motherboard! The choice is yours--speed or stability.
19 comments:
Hi
I just built a PC with an on-board Radeon 3000 Graphics card and am experiencing the same error message. Would you mind telling me the version of drivers you downloaded to fix the problem as i am having trouble finding it.
Thanks
See the amended blog post.
Thanks for the info. Having his same problem with a brand new Biostar A780L3G board with ATI Radeon 3000 onboard. Had no idea what drivers to try though. I had this same problem in the past with Radeon 9700. I think after this, I'm done with ATI.
It's a pity, because NVIDIA isn't necessarily problem-free either. I'm not sure what is happening with ATI with their drivers. There is no excuse for not offering old versions of the drivers at the very least. That would cost them little.
I have the exact same problem, only that the computer sometimes freeze on the bios screen too. I'll try tonight your recommendation and I'll tell you how it goes. Thank you.
I bumped up to version 10.12 yesterday (from 10.9). Under 10.9, my PC was behaving better (no blue screens of death), but was still not acceptable. It would reboot when viewing YouTube videos from Facebook. It remains to be seen whether 10.12 avoids this problem. I've tried a great many other remedies, including upgrading Flash to the latest version.
However, another fix I read about in a forum was quite simple. Right-click on a Flash video (for instance, on the Adobe web site), and select from the Flash menu, select Settings. Then un-check the box that says "Use Hardware Acceleration". That is supposed to be a fix for the reboot-on-viewing-flash-videos problem. Time will tell.
What operating system are you running? I'm running Windows XP. I suspect these problems might be tied to XP as the world has moved onto Win7 and minimal testing is occurring on XP.
I'm also had an issue whereby my VPN would cause the machine to reboot. This was traced back to a conflict with Comodo Firewall. However, I have the exact same setup on my laptop without problem. Makes me wonder if this chipset is not stable for multiple reasons.
I run Windows XP, and it still commands a sizable chunk of the user base.
It didn't work. The computer still freezes. I think I'm gonna have to buy a new board :( Thanks anyway.
I tried several things in diagnosing the problem on my rig. Another thing you might try is to perform error correction on the hard drive. Right-click on the drive letter in Windows Explorer, then select Properties | Tools | Error Checking and click the Check Now button. Check the "Fix file errors automatically" box, but leave the "Scan for bad sectors" box UNchecked, unless you have 6+ hours to wait around for a surface scan--it takes a long time. Might be worth trying if you do have time to spare though. The file system error checking option requires a reboot, but is relatively fast, taking about half an hour or less. It found some errors on my drive and corrected them. May have been related to the Blue Screen of Death problem that interfered with Windows' ability to maintain the file system.
My system has been running rock solid since I went to the 10.9 drivers. However, I did a fresh install of Windows XP as I needed to resolve the VPN/Comodo Firewall issue I was experiencing with spontaneous reboots. I'm now running Zone Alarm with Comodo Antivirus with no problems at all.
Good, I'm glad the advice was helpful. Worked for me as well.
I upgraded to Windows 7 since this was a new machine and upgraded to the newest ATI drivers just to confirm my suspicions and all the various problems I was seeing with XP have disappeared. I was also to install Comodo internet security with no issues with my VPN. So as I suspected, the problems seem to reside with XP and I imagine will continue to as focus is put on the newer operating systems.
Sounds like a reasonable conclusion to me. I stayed with XP & the old drivers, or actually an even older (much older) driver taken from the motherboard manufacturer's web site.
Hello,
I have Radeon 3000 as integrated gpu in my new Asus m4a78lt-m le motherboard with windows xp. The only problem i am facing is poor image and video quality. Videos are pixelated. My previous computer which had intel 815 chipset was much clearer and sharper. I am using stock drivers which came with my motherboard, driver version is 8.641.0.0. Can you guys confirm if your videos play well as we are talking about same gpu and 760g chipset. The drivers which come with motherboard should not be causing these kind of problem. otherwise the fault has to be with the integrated graphics hardware.
thankyou.
Videos and images play well on my rig.
You wrote that your motherboard is new, not your whole rig. So it could be that you're using the same installation as before, when you had an intel 815. That is OK, but you need to uninstall the previous video driver and any applications that are for that chipset.
sorry i didn't make it clear, actually my whole system is new. i installed winxp on a new sata disk. i have also removed and reinstalled drivers, no change. 10 year old i815 chipset has given me better crisper clarity with no pixelation. i don't know what to do. There is no pixelation in games but ingame videos look pixelated.
I've been searching the whole day, not many people have reported this problem, the people who have reported have not followed up. i've pm'd couple of them looking at their two year old threads.
http://forums.guru3d.com/private.php?do=showpm&pmid=295596
http://forums.techarena.in/monitor-video-cards/1260144.htm
I have not encountered that type of problem on my rigs, and my experience with other rigs is limited, so I advise that you look elsewhere for a solution, because the information you need is probably specific to your hardware, unless this is another case of hardware failure, and let's hope it's not. Good luck. If all else fails, remember, there's nothing saying you can't ship it back to the vendor for a refund.
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