Windows 7: Strange Issue with AMD Catalyst 12.8 under Windows 7 x64 upon restart

Essentially this issue only shows up after the system is shut down or after a restart.



The issue is that after a reboot/restart - Aero is disabled and can't be fixed (via windows aero trouble-shooter - coming back with a message that my card may support Aero but the driver installed doesn't) - In device manager the card shows up fine and displays the correct version of the 8.982 display driver being installed, and as such, any attempts to upgrade the driver through device manager fail as it reports it already has the latest driver.

CCC (Catalyst Control Centre) will start but I'm presented with a white window and a window frame but nothing is selectable (nor any options to select) - it has to be closed from the icon on the taskbar or from task manager.

If I run the AMD Catalyst 12.8 setup file again - and select install -> custom options, I'm presented with a window that tells me everything is installed, however there are 3 options where the green tick is surrounded by a grey checkbox, of which only 2 can be de-selected, (the first non-selectable one is the AMD install manager) the other two selectable/deselectable ones are for the AMD Display Driver and the AMD HDMI Audio Driver.

From these options I've realised that re-installing the AMD Display Driver (via the AMD Catalyst setup.exe file) fixes the problem until the next restart, (I can use the install -> typical option instead of the custom option but it takes longer as it re-installs everything, and it seems that the custom option only re-installs the install manager & the display driver).

Problem is after the next restart or shut down, start-up - it needs to be done again, i.e it doesn't seem to stick - I can put the computer to sleep and wake it without a problem or can log-off and back on without problem, only happens after a restart or shut-down.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this ? - even if it is a matter of somehow silently re-installing the Display driver via some sort of script at start up so I don't have to do it manually ? - driving me nuts as essentially it works except for this issue.

You may need to uninstall the graphics driver clean the registry and reinstall, i have seen in this forum someone wrote a good solid clean way of doing this, however, if you restart the pc in safe mode then uninstall etc. it should be ok, if not then see if you can find the uninstall thread(do this before the uninstall) if i get a few minutes i will look too.

Thanks for the response razy.

I've tried uninstalling the driver then running Driver Fusion - free version, (which used to be called Driver Sweeper) which cleared out a bunch of stuff the Catalyst driver uninstall left behind. Then restarted & reinstalled the 12.8 software which required a reboot after install, and worked fine on the first reboot. However the same problem came back after the next reboot.

I did a search for the thread you mentioned and found one saying to do almost exactly the same as what I've already tried (described above), only I didn't run the Driver Sweeper/Fusion program from safe mode - so will have to give that a try perhaps something didn't get removed properly - and will run a registry clean using CCleaner after driver uninstall also, as maybe there is something afoul there too.

I'm pretty busy the next few days so probably won't get a chance to do it for a bit but will update the thread after I try it.

Ok had a chance to try it a few times and unfortunately it doesn't seem to matter what I do, the driver fails to run properly after reboot (presumably it doesn't install correctly or being the first Windows 8 compatible driver the driver doesn't like Aero as Windows 8 doesn't either). Also a new error was introduced in the ASUS SmartDoctor program that came with the card causing it to not be able to detect the Graphic Card settings - which didn't happen originally.

Unfortunately I've had to go back to original driver from DVD for the time being as I didn't have a backup of the last driver I had working properly, but I'm thinking I'll just revert back to 12.6, which is forward from the original DVD Driver I'm now running but without issue.

Doing what your doing is your best bet for now, if 12.6 worked go for it. sometimes updates wont install for no reason then its all good,!!

did you download the 12.8 from AMD/ATI website. if so did you download the hydravision too.