BSOD after about 30 hours of use, believe it is catalyst 12.2 related

flinchn said:

I'll come back in the thread if I have another occurrence - but my bluescreens were previously happening hourly at least - on a clean Win7 install. And I have been using my rig much more intensively today than earlier in the week.

on mine it had been happening almost every 30 hours on the dot, the other day it happend almost 65 hours after the previous one, a clean install can just change the problems time line, as shown in my case here... i will do what you tried and see if it works for me also, just keep us informed.

Important: I have updated my steps a few posts up.

flinchn said:

I read somewhere, maybe this thread even, that Overdrive bugs was the cause of the atikmpag.sys blue screens. I had of course set everything to default and disabled overclocking, but no joy - I think even ticking the overdrive box once screws you.

I have had a great amount of success the past two days with absolutely no bluescreens. Here are the exact steps I followed, so maybe it will help others:

Prereqs:
Winrar or equivalent
Driver Cleaner from drivercleaner.net (fully updated)

1. Uninstalled the display driver in Device Manager
2. Uninstalled the Catalyst 12.2 in Programs and Features
3. Rebooted into Safe Mode
4. Ran Driver Cleaner [make sure you update this with an internet connection or it will miss files]
5. Checked all the ATI filters, removed the ATI garbage

***EDIT - You do NOT want to remove the /Windows/WINSXS files or SFC will fail! The more I read about this (affects both Driver Sweeper and Driver Cleaner) the more I think you should not do this step unless you want to risk reinstalling Windows when the next SP comes out)***

6. Reboot
7. Unzipped the Catalyst 12.2 package with Winrar
8. Went into Device Manager, pointed the Display component to the unpacked Catalyst directory for driver update. (standard VGA driver was installed)
9. Reboot
10. Ran the Catalyst installer, installed *only* CCC. (nothing else checked even the AMD Display driver since its already installed in step 8 -except the required installer itself)
11. Reboot
12. Set my desired settings in CCC - but never *ever* have I accessed the Performance/Overdrive dialog
13. Used MSI Afterburner to set overclocking.
14. Play Skyrim :)

ok, time to try this, im doin it today, nuther bsod this morn, it seems to be happening right around 5 am DST

I had a single bluescreen early this morning, and that was one too many! So, I found these newer (I assume, beta) catalysts and followed steps 1 thru 6 above to get clean and then just autoinstalled these:

AMD Catalyst 8.96 28 February – BenchmarK3D

There are newer (Windows 8-related betas here, but I'll try them later if I have to):
AMD Catalyst 8.951.1 05 March – BenchmarK3D


Benchmarks are also on the site (I just found it last night- not advertising for it).
I suspect support for 7900 series is going through some growing pains, but who knows, maybe I should have gone Nvidia. Too late now, but by the time I need Crossfire perhaps they will have sorted this out some. In any case, I should have known better than to get a rig with every component only a month or so old, but it was so inexpensive compared to the old days when a put-together-for-you gaming computer would be 5k. I really can't complain too much considering this is my only issue and the rig is blazing fast (read:instant) at every task...

(also if anyone followed my steps and cleaned out Win7x64 ATI base drivers with Driver Cleaner so that SFC fails, I have the fix so let me know - unfortunately I only found out about this after so profuse apologies)

flinchn said:

I had a single bluescreen early this morning, and that was one too many! So, I found these newer (I assume, beta) catalysts and followed steps 1 thru 6 above to get clean and then just autoinstalled these:

AMD Catalyst 8.96 28 February – BenchmarK3D

There are newer (Windows 8-related betas here, but I'll try them later if I have to):
AMD Catalyst 8.951.1 05 March – BenchmarK3D


Benchmarks are also on the site (I just found it last night- not advertising for it).
I suspect support for 7900 series is going through some growing pains, but who knows, maybe I should have gone Nvidia. Too late now, but by the time I need Crossfire perhaps they will have sorted this out some. In any case, I should have known better than to get a rig with every component only a month or so old, but it was so inexpensive compared to the old days when a put-together-for-you gaming computer would be 5k. I really can't complain too much considering this is my only issue and the rig is blazing fast (read:instant) at every task...

(also if anyone followed my steps and cleaned out Win7x64 ATI base drivers with Driver Cleaner so that SFC fails, I have the fix so let me know - unfortunately I only found out about this after so profuse apologies)

ok, just got DC and was gunna do it, so follow 1-6, make backups of the sfc files lol, gunna try this out.

nvidia has problems too, just different ones just fyi

flinchn said:

I had a single bluescreen early this morning, and that was one too many! So, I found these newer (I assume, beta) catalysts and followed steps 1 thru 6 above to get clean and then just autoinstalled these:

AMD Catalyst 8.96 28 February – BenchmarK3D

There are newer (Windows 8-related betas here, but I'll try them later if I have to):
AMD Catalyst 8.951.1 05 March – BenchmarK3D


Benchmarks are also on the site (I just found it last night- not advertising for it).
I suspect support for 7900 series is going through some growing pains, but who knows, maybe I should have gone Nvidia. Too late now, but by the time I need Crossfire perhaps they will have sorted this out some. In any case, I should have known better than to get a rig with every component only a month or so old, but it was so inexpensive compared to the old days when a put-together-for-you gaming computer would be 5k. I really can't complain too much considering this is my only issue and the rig is blazing fast (read:instant) at every task...

(also if anyone followed my steps and cleaned out Win7x64 ATI base drivers with Driver Cleaner so that SFC fails, I have the fix so let me know - unfortunately I only found out about this after so profuse apologies)

will the 12.1 drivers not work? the 12.1 drivers rocked, it was when i upgraded to 12.2 that i had the problems, ill try it and post my findings cuz the 12 drivers where by far the best

this should work, ill try it out

http://downloads.guru3d.com/downloadget.php?id=2846&file=1&evp=1952d4b02fb2ca01be10bb1d2118cc1a

12.1 don't support 7900series, so I'm not about to try them

flinchn said:

12.1 don't support 7900series, so I'm not about to try them

really, ok
wow

i think thats our problem... thats what changed, 12.1 did, 12.2 didnt, 12.1 didnt offer support for 7000 but 12.2 was offering the full features of 12.1 for 7000, it was a bug fix for 7000 that screwed 6000 users over... i think i get it, i might be wrong, but i think this makes the most sence yet

flinchn said:

12.1 don't support 7900series, so I'm not about to try them

i have a prety big oroblem. i get into safe mode and the pc restarts... each time. im texting this from my phone while on step 2

Boot into System Recovery Options to run Startup Repair repeatedly. If this fails, try working backward using System Restore.

I would establish a Clean Boot as given in these troubleshooting steps to eliminate that this is a Program at fault. My bet would be CCC bloatware.