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

[Maguscreed]

In all fairness I've owned both nvidia and ati products. quite a few from both at this point.
They all suffer from problems in various configurations.
It's just nearly impossible to cover all possible configurations in every driver pack.
They do try.
This however is a fault in the .net framework, and yes they should have fixed it by now as it's seemingly caused by just one or two false dll calls during the installer process.

 

[jwells81]

This is kind of rediculous. I have not enjoyed my EAH 6870 for a year now because of this issue. This issue claimed my previous card 3870x2 as it caused so much visual issues my card kept resetting until it ruined it. It's time AMD/ATI fixed this internal .net problem. I have followed all steps in this forum, as well as other forums. This forum showed me something new in assembly however as after following the steps now I get this error when the pc boots up as cmd tries to run: "windows cannot find C:\Program Files(x86)\AMD AVT\bin\kdbsync.exe". Yay... and I can't get it to go away and I use regedit just fine as well as system mechanic.

Worse, is that CCC is not listed at all now. It is in my control panel, uninstall etc. But not when I right click on my desktop. What in the hell... Rediculous. Its simple, write a program that completely uninstalls correctly your product. Give the uninstall the correct permissions to find everything associated with itself and lets all move forward with out having to change products (nVidia) for instance. I have not enjoyed this at all.

Oh and fun fact... I had 227 public key tokens labeled as 90ba9c70f846762e
sure wish it would have fixed my problem. I've been installing and uninstalling 12-6 from AMD btw.

 

[Maguscreed]

You specifically may want to try driver sweeper if you haven't already.
Just make sure you only tell it to remove display related drivers.
Phyxion.net - Driver Sweeper

...and I totally agree, nvidia and ati both need uninstallers that actually uninstall everything.

 

[jwells81]

Wow... fast reply Thank you for the info, I have tried that before and didn't get any results but I thought, why not I should try it again after having done these other steps (assebly). It's a new one now, called Driver Fusion instead of sweeper. I ran it and found a ton... ran it again, found some more. Then realized, some weren't going away (HKEY)... but oh well. I cleaned as best as I could so I tried a nice fresh install of 12-6 and guess what... after a year of frustration and one destroyed x2 card, I finally, FINALLY have CCC again. I'm filled with happiness and grawr!

Thank you for giving me the right advice at the right time, I'm very thankful to you.

 

[Maguscreed]

No problem,
I'm hopeful eventually this thread will be rendered useless, (meaning they finally fix the problem) until then I'm just glad to know I wasn't basically talking to myself when I wrote it.

 

[DublinGunner]

I've often browsed here for solutions to issues etc but for the first time I actually felt obliged to register to express my thanks at the OP's solution.

I have been dumbfounded by this problem for months, and your solution fixed it - THANK YOU!

 

[Velorra]

I registered just to say THANK YOU for this info - CCC now runs perfectly. Thanks again!!

 

[beefski]

Same here, been debating whether or not to try this for far too long but seeing your guide made it seem simple enough to actually work. Tried it and 5 minutes later I've managed to fix overscan. Many thanks mate!

 

[Dave76]

Driver Sweeper is getting hard to find, it is no longer available at Phyxion.net - Driver Sweeper.

You can D/L it from this Seven Forums tutorial:
Drivers - Clean Left over Files after Uninstalling
Go to #1 'Download', this is a Seven Forums download link, not a third party.

 

[Maguscreed]

Will update my links, it's not a integral part of the main fix I posted here, it was something I added later for a person with a specific problem that happened by it. All the same thanks for the update.

 

[dsperber]

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]

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

That being said a over abundance of information never hurt anyone so thanks for the contribution

 

[dsperber]

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.

 

[Maguscreed]

AV's and firewalls love to interfere with pretty much anything that wants to make changes to the system.
It's the reason they have snooze features.

 

[aohare94]

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]

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

 

[aohare94]

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

 

[Maguscreed]

Oh well, as long as you are sorted I don't really care how it happened, right now I'm just debating whether I should add the alternate version with the different wording to my original post.

 

[AJ Ferguson]

Thank you so much!

 

[Auriam]

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.