Fix - Catalyst Control Center - CCC - will not open/install

Found the following similar but somewhat more detailed recipe to get CCC fully uninstalled, and then successfully reinstalled, in this thread on the HardwareHeaven.com site.

Uninstall just CCC selectively (using Catalyst Install Manager), and then:

1. Check that registry locations are empty:

a. HKCU/Software/ATI/ACE
b. HKLM/Software/ATI/ACE

2. Check that (Program Files (X86) folder )/ATI Technologies/ATI.ACE is empty

3. Check (Windows folder)/Assembly folder to see if there's any files with Public Key Token of "90ba9c70f846762e" (Sort by Public key token to get a easier view). All these tokens should be uninstalled by right clicking and uninstalling.

4. Check that (Document and Settings)/(User)/AppData/Local/ATI/ACE is empty

5. Reinstall just CCC selectively, by running SETUP.EXE from the expanded Catalyst installer folder.


The thread is talking about Mobility drivers and support, but I used it successfully on a Win7 x64 desktop machine running with an HD5450 and current Catalyst 12.8 drivers. My post (thanking the provider of the "recipe") is at the bottom of that thread.

Astonishingly, it worked perfectly!! Actually, there was one minor unexpected issue but it didn't seem to make a difference. I could not delete absolutely everything under \Program Files (X86)\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE, because one file CLIStart.exe in the \Core-Static sub-folder was apparently open and active. I simply skipped it, kept my fingers crossed that it wasn't critical, and continued on with the rest of the recipe. Apparently it was not critical.

After CCC's refusing to launch no matter what I did (from my usual methods to get it working, short of a complete driver uninstall with Driver Fusion and then a complete driver reinstall), the above recipe worked flawlessly to get just CCC launching properly again.

Maguscreed said:

Ah some of that is a bit older I think. To their credit CCC uninstaller (assuming it functions) now removes the Ace and reg entries.

Are you talking about Catalyst Install Manager used for selective uninstall of CCC? As I meant to express above, that did NOT work for me... for some reason.

The first symptom was that CCC wouldn't launch, although I absolutely know it used to after I upgraded that machine to 12.8. I verified that everything was operating normally, including CCC.

So for some reason it had recently stopped working.

I then did the usual thing that works for me, namely (a) uninstall, and then (b) reinstall. But this time that was not successful in bringing CCC back to life.

That's when I started searching and found that post (which was originally an old one, but had been recently used in Feb of 2012, so I felt it had merit for me to try as well).

And sure enough, even though Catalyst Install Manager offered to uninstall CCC and I took that route, afterwards I looked at the items specified in that recipe to "check". And sure enough the Registry keys and program files folder were both NON-EMPTY (... even though Catalyst Install Manager claimed the uninstall went swimmingly). There were no items in \Assembly with the specified public key. So some things were correctly removed, but others were not... apparently.

So I just did what the recipe called for, and cleaned house on all of the other items which were non-empty. Then I re-booted, and thankfully the desktop popup menu did NOT show CCC at the top. That was finally encouraging, since it hadn't disappeared after the official uninstall.

Then I reinstalled CCC, and magically it launched perfectly.

In other words, the above items in that recipe are probably all the things Catalyst Install Manager is supposed to do. It just didn't, for some reason. So manually completing that list as necessary is something worth sharing.

I certainly was thoroughly amazed, impressed, and pleased. It's really a very simple procedure.

Though it is true that some AV's/ firewalls can interfere (always snooze them for install unistall no matter the application)

Well, good point here. I actually hadn't disabled AV for the uninstall, though to be honest I never have found that to be necessary.

But... could be relevant. Hadn't thought of that. But the still active AV (Microsoft Security Essentials) didn't seem to have any problem letting me manually delete Registry keys and entire program sub-folders, so I honestly don't think this really is at work here.

dsperber said:

Found the following similar but somewhat more detailed recipe to get CCC fully uninstalled, and then successfully reinstalled, in this thread on the HardwareHeaven.com site.

Uninstall just CCC selectively (using Catalyst Install Manager), and then:

1. Check that registry locations are empty:

a. HKCU/Software/ATI/ACE
b. HKLM/Software/ATI/ACE

2. Check that (Program Files (X86) folder )/ATI Technologies/ATI.ACE is empty

3. Check (Windows folder)/Assembly folder to see if there's any files with Public Key Token of "90ba9c70f846762e" (Sort by Public key token to get a easier view). All these tokens should be uninstalled by right clicking and uninstalling.

4. Check that (Document and Settings)/(User)/AppData/Local/ATI/ACE is empty

5. Reinstall just CCC selectively, by running SETUP.EXE from the expanded Catalyst installer folder.


The thread is talking about Mobility drivers and support, but I used it successfully on a Win7 x64 desktop machine running with an HD5450 and current Catalyst 12.8 drivers. My post (thanking the provider of the "recipe") is at the bottom of that thread.

Astonishingly, it worked perfectly!! Actually, there was one minor unexpected issue but it didn't seem to make a difference. I could not delete absolutely everything under \Program Files (X86)\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE, because one file CLIStart.exe in the \Core-Static sub-folder was apparently open and active. I simply skipped it, kept my fingers crossed that it wasn't critical, and continued on with the rest of the recipe. Apparently it was not critical.

After CCC's refusing to launch no matter what I did (from my usual methods to get it working, short of a complete driver uninstall with Driver Fusion and then a complete driver reinstall), the above recipe worked flawlessly to get just CCC launching properly again.

OMG, thank you dsperber!!! I did EVERYTHING I could find online. Uninstalling, legacy, safe-mode, reinsert video card, you name it! The secret was the Appdata suggestion you had me check. To anyone else reading this, don;t give up and make sure you SHOW hidden files and folder before doing this. You put an end to my misery. I made this account just to tank you sir.

Maguscreed said:

Actually the steps are identical to mine.
whatever works for you though.

Yes, without your thread I would have never found a solution. Thank you for providing an answer to this issue :)

Thank you so much!

I found a fix on Microsoft Community Answers forums.

The problem, as it has been for many people, is a Microsoft "improvement" to Windows 7's graphics to make it more Windows-8-like and support IE10 - but it also breaks ATI's display drivers. This is the culprit: update KB2670838. I have an ATI Radeon HD2600XT and this has been vexing me for months. It has also been making Windows Calculator unusable - which is where I found the solution (Windows - Microsoft Community...). Shame on Microsoft for releasing a 'patch' which breaks so many people's display drivers - and not fixing it!

As soon as I uninstalled this patch (via Control Panel / Programs and Features / Show Updates) and rebooted, CCC began working just fine - and Calculator was back to normal too.