ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Problem

sygnus21 said:

Since he has a screen I would assume the video card is working.

As for......

Stratos said:

OR if you can find another spare hard drive to which you can load Windows 7 32bit, and load the correct drivers + WoW.

He just needs to find the correct driver for his video card as he already has a 32-bit OS installed.

Anyway the OP can try the 10.2 drivers here..... ATI Catalyst

If that doens't work, look here..... Previous Catalyst

Let us know.

If his problem is simply driver-related, I agree however if he has a hardware problem (remember that's a 9800 series video card, it's quite old), no amount of driver tuning will resolve a card that's failing at the hardware level, the most logical step is to make certain that the hardware is not faulty. Driver tuning on a pre-existing operating installation will NOT identify a faulty card.

A compromised Operating System installation can cause problems even when the drivers are installed properly. This is why it's best to test the video card on a separate hard drive with a fresh installation of Windows (32bit to match his real system), load the correct software and drivers and test it out that way. If the video card performs properly then it's very likely that the hardware is in good shape. If it doesn't work properly despite a new OS install, new drivers amongst other things, then it's likely the card is bad.

All in all I hope it's just a matter of him clearing out outdated addons for his WoW game and simply updating to the latest Radeon driver set from AMD/ATI. If that doesn't work however...

When you say install the drivers, what do you mean? Because when I download the Catalyst Software Suite from the linked website, I click setup, which installs it on my computer. When I try to update the driver by searching through my computer for one (instead of doing automatic update), which file is the actual driver that I should select?

Also, once I uninstall old drivers, windows makes the hardware safely removed sound, but then my screen goes completely dark, anyway around that?

Thanks for the help!!

Regardless, I've been trying to fix this for about a week or so. At some point I'll probably go out and buy a new video card, since its high time for an upgrade anyway.

Dre281 said:

When you say install the drivers, what do you mean? Because when I download the Catalyst Software Suite from the linked website, I click setup, which installs it on my computer. When I try to update the driver by searching through my computer for one (instead of doing automatic update), which file is the actual driver that I should select?

Also, once I uninstall old drivers, windows makes the hardware safely removed sound, but then my screen goes completely dark, anyway around that?

Thanks for the help!!

It's best to let the Catalyst software make that determination automatically. While supporting World of Warcraft is not what we do here, you could try and simply temporarily relocating your addons folder elsewhere and start the game. If the game recently got patched, then it's possible some visuals were affected.

However like I said earlier, we don't know what the problem is, simply saying that it's driver related is a blind guess and if your Windows installation is messed up without your knowing, simple driver fixes won't correct the problem.

The first and foremost question is, is the video card working properly, to answer that you could load Windows onto a diff hard drive, load up all the required drivers for your machine, load WoW then see if that works without issue. If it's all good then we know your video card and drivers are fine. Now we can work on software issues.

When it comes to troubleshooting, you must always confirm the condition of the hardware first before dealing with anything software.

Dre281 said:

When you say install the drivers, what do you mean? Because when I download the Catalyst Software Suite from the linked website, I click setup, which installs it on my computer.

If you've installed the Catalyst suite then the drivers installed as well. All is good.

Now that doesn't automatically mean your performance issue will go away, it just means the driver isn't the issue.

In short, if the catalyst suit installed, all is good - there's nothing else to install.

As for the game itself, you might check to make sure you have the latest patch.

Also as noted, that card is quite old. I have an ATI RADEON ALL-IN-WONDER 9800 PRO that I bought in 2003