Windows 7: ATI drivers refuse to install

Hi there

Win 7 64bit
Aspire 5251-1513 laptop
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250


I downloaded Catalyst drivers 11.1(1/26/11)
I removed the display adapter and related drivers in the hardware panel
(reboot into safe-mode)
I ran Driver Sweeper and selected ATI
(reboot)
I ran the Catalyst executable as administrator.
(reboot)
I have no driver.



I have tried this many different ways(both the individual driver and the whole shebang), but the end result is the same. I am now running on the stock Win 7 driver.

I'm not sure what else to try and would love some suggestions on how I might get some drivers installed for this card.

thanks,
json

In device manager, under Display Adapters, is it showing your ATI card correctly? If so, when you right click it and select properties, what driver is it showing?

I've used ATI cards for years, and from time to time a new version will be borked up. I haven't downloaded this latest one yet so I don't know if it's got problems.

A possibility is when you select properties, then check "Roll Back Driver" and see if it will take you to the one you were last using. Unless you use the Catalyst Control Center, you could just download the driver itself and try installing that.

When I'm installing new versions I don't remove the display adapter or drivers. I run Driver Sweeper, as you did, then run the new download.

Sounds like Driver Sweeper removed more than it should, which it can and does do from time to time. Hope you can do a system restore or have a backup image from before you ran DS, as usually the only way to fix what you are describing is to re-install Windows to replace the missing files.

No longer. Now it's just a standard VGA adapter. Starting up Catalyst now tells me that there's no applicable ATI device installed.

I tried it this way the first time. Upon reboot, it was still using the old drivers. Removing the display adapter was an attempt to get it to stop using the old drivers.

Rolling it back will not solve my issue(later drivers), so is there any way out of my pickle besides that? I find it surprising that today's technological marvel of an OS has no way to detect the card that on-board and that I'm locked into the driver that shipped with the machine.

Thanks very much for your time.

Did you try the driver on the acer support page. Here is the page.

Acer Support: Drivers & Support Documents - Notebook / Aspire / Aspire 5251

If you can install that, then you can update afterwards in device manager.

Hello Schwim

I had similar issues initially with 11.1 on Windows 7 x64.

As a last resort I redownloaded the Drivers from ATI and it worked.

So, try redownloading the Drivers from ATI and see if that helps.

Kevin

Hi there everyone and thanks very much for all of your suggestions.

As suggested, I downloaded the driver package from the Acer site, which got me my old driver back as well as a recognized ATI card in the device manager.

Upon starting CCC, I get a Windows error that Catalyst has stopped working. I can't get it to start up to try to update drivers that way.

Device managers "internet update" tells me that Windows has determined that my one year old driver is up to date.

I don't know how I will go about with a local update via the device manager, as I only have the Catalyst executables and don't seem to be able to get the necessary driver files to update through that method.

So to clarify, I'm back to having an ATI card with one year old drivers, a Catalyst app that refuses to run and a device manager that I don't know how to update the drivers through.

[EDIT]I even tried running the updated ATI driver package again, in hopes that it would update Catalyst, allowing it to run. Even after that, I still get the "Catalyst Command Line Interface has stopped working" error.[/EDIT]

Any thoughts concerning where I might go from here?

Thanks to all very much for your time so far.
json

I would think if you unistalled CCC through the Control Panel then downloaded the drivers only from AMD, without the Catalyst Control Center, you would be able to then install them.

I personally don't have a need for CCC, so I just get the stand alone drivers when I update them.

Hi there cato and thanks for the help.

I am only allowed the option to "repair" the CCC install via "remove software". I can't find any way to actually uninstall the application. I found this same problem on my brother's computer as well. In fact, his CCC install also errored out upon startup.

I tried the standalone version first as well, since I don't like the bloat("play lotro free!!!!"), but when that didn't work, I went with the whole package, in hopes that it would get me an updated driver.

So, I'm out of ideas on getting an up-to-date driver on this computer.

thanks,
json

Can you locate Catalyst install manager in Add/remove programs? Or is that what're you're already talking about, you need to select custom uninstall (not express), that'll show up all catalyst stuff on the computer.

Can you post a snipshot of what exactly shows up in Add/remove features?