Windows 7: ATI Catalyst Update

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 32 Bit. My video card is a Sapphire HD5750. I dl'd the latest (10.6) Catalyst drivers. What is the proper procedure to update the drivers?

Boot into safe mode (F8) and double click the installer.

IF you downloaded from ATi I would uninstall the driver and display adapter in Control Panel and it reverts to 800x600 resolution. Download and install CCleaner and Drivesweeper and run them to remove everything concerning ATi.

For the 64 bit version of your GPU card driver go to SAPPHIRE- HOME

For the 32 bit version go to SAPPHIRE- HOME

Just install over top of the previous. Waste of time uninstalling, driver sweeper, safe mode, ect. I always install over top of the older drivers with no problems at all. You don't even have to reboot after installing. You should have a fresh drive image just in case.
Also, the 10.6's giving people a lot of problems. You should stay with 10.5 for now.
AMD Game Forums - ATI Catalyst

Not needed as when run using the Catalyst Install Manager it uninstalls the old driver before installing the new, that's why the screen goes black and flashes a couple of time when installing the new driver.


Again not needed (especially Driver Sweeper) unless you are troubleshooting or experiencing a problem when updating, and if DS is used improperly can cause more problems that it solves(think of those times you have seen someone use it and end up stuck with the good old "standard vga", and quite often the only way to fix it is a re-install of Windows if a backup wasn't made beforehand).

Also unless it is a laptop, ATI drivers are ATI driver regardless of who the card was made by. At most the only difference from the one from Sapphire or any of the other AiB's is it may show the manufacture's name somewhere during the install and/or in CCC after (just had a look at the one from Sapphire and all they did was take the same download available from ATI and put it in a zip file).

To answer the original question, over the top by running the downloaded driver file as the Catalyst Install Manager takes care of uninstalling the old before installing the new.

Well it's been 50/50 on doing what I said versus simply loading over the top on the Alienware PC's and laptops. Neither method is wrong and yes, the way I do it takes a step or two longer but all it does is take a bit more time and certainly worth doing when the current driver is causing problems on most platforms, the old better safe than sorry route.

The safe route is to image the drive just before installing.

Thanx folks. Tried the Safe Mode approach......... no go. So, I uninstalled through the Device Manager, then ran the uninstall portion, then installed the new driver. Seems to be working great. I did notice a slight improvement in picture quality with the new driver.