ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 display driver

suggest you uninstall the driver in safe mode and install the latest version.

hi jvcupo,

i also have inspiron 9100 with the same problem as yours. what did you do to solve the problem regarding ati2dvag?

cheers

Hi zonder naam,

I still havent found a solution yet. When I do, I will share it with you.

jvcupo

 

Hi jvcupo,

I found this site this morning:

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-28206.html

Hey zonder naam,

I went do Dell.com and searched for "ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 video driver updates". I downloaded the first update on the list, and so far I have no problems. Follow the installation instructions exactly. I had to do it twice because I made a mistake.

If it happens again I will try your link.

Jvcupo

 

Hey zonder naam

Dont bother with the update. It didn't last long. I followed your link to solution by "cobrakaun"

hi Jvcupo,

I did the same, and end up with the same results as yours...getting slow! so many problems I have with my DELL inspiron 9100,i.e. lcd, video driver, small letters... don't know what will happen next.

cheers,

zonder naam

 

You may want to try the omega drivers and use driver cleaner pro before installing new drivers as it cleans up leftover junk files that are left behind when uninstalling through control pane>add and remove programs.

 

http://www.drivercleaner.net/professional.html

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

Best Wishes

 

 

Inspiron XPS Gen 2
770 (2.13 GHz/2MB Cache/533 MHz Fsb
7800 Go GTX 17" 1920X1200
100 gig hardrive 2 GIG's Ram
AUDIGY 2 ZS PCMCIA sound card
Logitech Z 5300 5.1 Speakers
OS Windows XP Pro sp2
Logitech MX 1000 Cordless Laser Mouse
Nostromo n52 Game pad

Halleluiah! I have (at least for today) overcome the ATI driver infinite loop bug.

I installed the drivers on www.omegadrivers.net.
I had been struggling with the ATI infinite loop for over a year. This Inspiron 9100/Radeon 9700 had not booted normally on the first try since February, 2005. I had made three runs at Dell Tech support (I have the three year extended warranty) with no success. Under their very polite and patient guidance I did the following:
1. I reloaded the latest ATI drivers from Dell.
2. I reformatted my hard drive and reloaded all my software.
3. Last week Dell sent me a replacement hard drive as disk errors had begun to crop up in the diagnostics. I loaded an image of my old hard drive (Acronis True Image and a Maxtor external Firewire drive, if you are interested). Then I uninstalled and then reloaded the ATI drivers.

None of these had worked. I was about to try a totally clean instal from the Dell CD's when I stumbled across this reference to the www.omegadrivers.net site. I figured why not give it a try.

Bingo! For the first time in over a year my laptop booted up normally. Being a cynic, I will wait a week or two before declaring victory, however it looks promising.

I used:
Radeon Omega Drivers 3.8.231 (Catalyst 6.3)
under the XP operating system.

It took a couple of attempts to download it, but following their instructions (see the FAQ) and uninstalled the ATI control panel prior to installation, all went as advertised. Good luck. I hope Dell looks into this.

Update to the above. After 5 days of flawless performance and perfect daily bootups, the infinite loop upon first boot of the day resurfaced. This time the display showed all sorts of evil bleeds and white dots. At that point I powered off the machine. After restarting the machine, I had a normal boot. So I am back where I started except the Omega drivers provide me with much more entertaining failure modes. Something in this process caused the Windows System Restore checkpoints I had to cease functioning, so they were no help. (Cycling the System Restore restores functionality, but loses old save points.)

So I am reloading a disk image from earlier in the month. I am wondering if there is some piece of software that I run and/or update that is clobbering the video driver (Windows XP auto updates, Norton Updates, iTunes, etc.). If I can restore good daily boots, I will start taking notes, I guess. Dell technical support has been only minimally helpful in all this.

Another update: I have shipped my Inspiron 9100 (without the hard drive) to Dell's Repair Depot. It is unclear what they will do without the hard drive as there seems to be some link between the infinite loop problem at boot up and the software configuration. Hopefully, the motherboard and/or the video card will be replaced. We will see. I am thankful for the 3 year extended warranty I purchased. Despite the inconvenience, I intend to pursue this until the machine is fixed.

Toad - can you describe what you mean by 'bootup' problems ??

My problem is very simply & clearcut - the display will *not* come on if the PC is cold. It flashes briefly when I hit the power switch - then just goes black and stay black while it boots up, regardless of using laptop LCD, or external VGA/DVI monitor connections.

If I let the PC stay on to warm up for a bit then recycle, all is fine it boots up normally and stays on forever. Same issue when going to standby - ie. if its still warm it will wakeup fine, else if cold it will go black.

Ah. Your problem sounds slightly more serious than does mine. My machine begins to boot up at power up. Then, after running through the "DELL LOGO" screen and the "Welcome to Windows XP" screen (with the back and forth animated scroll bar) the machine appears to be changing video modes and goes black. The back light is on, I think, but nothing at all is displayed - in fact, the boot up process hangs and never finishes. Occasionally, a variation of this is the appearance of a blue error text screen with something about an ATI driver being in an infinite loop. After powering the machine off (forced power off by holding down the power button until the machine stops) and then back up, the machine boots normally. At least I get the machine up. Hope this helps!