Windows 7: W7 and ThinkPad T400 ATI Radeon 3400 series driver

And the only thing you changed is the driver right?

Ken

yeah I updated it b/c the 8.56.... driver was not working at all, i didnt even see a logon screen.
Its really annoying as the internal Graphics Chip doesnt seem to work with my MiniDock, so I cant really use my external Monitor through DVI

I too have an ATI Mobility Radeon 3400 Series in my Lenovo T400, running 32bit Windows 7.
After install, device manager tells me the device is working properly, using a driver it got from Windows Update.

The driver that "works" is published on 4/28/2009 by ATI, version 8.612.0.0
The problem is that when using it to play a game, I'm getting horrible frame rate compared to what it was on Vista.

I tried to upgrade the driver to the newest from ATI using their driver selecting tool. I downloaded their catalyst software, and it tries to install driver published 5/15/2009, version 8.620.0.0.

This 8.620 driver actually causes my screen to be either only my wallpaper or an empty black screen. (Login screen is black, desktop is my wallpaper, ctrl+alt+delete screen is black). There is no cursor, icons or taskbar (nothing but the wallpaper is visible). It still accepts input, so I can make lots of "invalid input" beeps. I have to restart to safe mode and roll back the driver to 8.612 to actually use the computer.

I downloded a driver-modder from Mobility Modder - DriverHeaven.net, and ran it against the 8.620 driver... it produced the exact same results as not having run the tool.

Of course Lenovo is slow about releasing drivers for 7, has anyone else had more luck than I have? Suggestions? Thoughts even?

Well, I'm relieved (sort of) to have found this thread after a few hours of wasted effort. It sure looks like the current ATI drivers do not work properly with the T400 under Windows 7. So I'm just going to wait until the dust settles. Good thing I don't use this for games.

so no one can get video drivers to work on the ATI Radeon 3470 of T400 as of now? I don't mean getting switchable graphics to work, just the driver itself.

I haven't seen any descriptions of success. There's a long description of an hour-long process of updating drivers on an ATI forum, but I'm not sure it's relevant to the T400 issues. I also saw a post suggesting that one avoid the windows 7 drivers and install the latest Vista drivers; I tried that, and it doesn't work, either.

In my case, after installing the new drivers, everything except the wallpaper disappears from the desktop.

Eventually it will get worked out, but I'm going to wait for a reliable solution.

I had success, but forgot to post. Here's what I did...
I have a T400 with an Ati Mobile Radeon 3400.

Switchable graphics does not work, Lenovo did not have the drivers and AMD support told me simply that the drivers were beta and unsupported...

As I stated before, the "working" driver (version 8.612.0.0) is available from Windows Update. However, if you have tried the 8.620.0.0 driver, delete it before trying to roll back, otherwise it seems that windows will happily auto-update to this version!

After you have the driver set to 8.612.0.0, and the 8.620 removed, reboot and enter bios setup. There are a few settings that you should change. First being the default display adapter. I forget the exact options, but chose the PCI Express slot as the default. Secondly, disable switchable graphic. And set default to Discrete. These 3 options are on the same page, but I forget which one...

Save, Reboot.

When Windows boots, it will either just work, or not. If it does the same thing as it did before, reboot in safe mode (again) and roll back the driver to 8.612.0.0 (again), reboot again... all should work. If the screen works, but is really crappy resolution, go into device manager and have windows look for a driver via windows update. It will find/download 8.612 or you.

(Note: By "not work", I mean that the screen will only be black or your wallpaper.)

I do play games on my laptop, getting the graphics card to work made it possible again!

thank you for the posts guys

this will defintely help me get windows 7 graphics drivers working! however if anyone can get switchable graphics working, please let me know!

Thanks! That worked like a charm.

I deleted the current driver for the ATI video adapter in the device manager, then had it install the new driver.

Reboot

Enter BIOS (F1 when you see the ThinkPad splash screen)

Down Arrow to "Display"

Change the settings - PCI / Discrete Graphics / Switchable disabled

Save and continue

Mine came up at 800x600 but needed to finish installing drivers. Then it wanted to restart and everything was fine. Looks like it's supposed to.

THANKS.

Ok guys, can anybody give me some help here? I still havent got it working and I feel like a retard. First of all, every ATI Radeon 3400 driver I find is of 4/24/2009, not 4/29/2009. Still, the 4/24/2009 is still supposed to be 8.612.0.0. When I try to install the driver in windows safe mode, it wont install as the ATI Catalyst program says it couldnt start the graphic hardware recognizing mode. I can still install it after a normal windows startup; however, when I sucessfully install it, the device manager shows driver version 8.56. Although I downloaded the 8.612.0.0 version.

Does anybody see what the problem here is? Also, can maybe one of you guys give me a link to the 8.612.0.0 driver that you got working, so I can make sure I download the right version?

Thanks,
Nico