ATI Catalyst 13.4 Drivers Installation Problem

[jim89]

Hi all,

First post here. I'll summarise:

I was a long time Windows user but decided to give Ubuntu a go at the start of this year. After some teething problems (caused, I think, by having an SSD and a UEFI motherboard rather than standard BIOS) After some messing about re-formating and creating the necessary partitions with a gParted LiveDisk I managed to get Windows 7 installed along side Ubuntu on my 120GB SSD. At the time, I simply installed Windows, went back and installed Ubuntu and then never felt the need to go back to Windows as I had no need for anything it offered.

Cut to now - I wanted to go back in to Windows to play some games that won't run on Ubuntu (at least not without faffing about with WINE for a very long time) so hopped back in to my other partition.
Once that had been done I went in to Windows to install updates/drivers/anti-virus etc before I could game on it.

I have an ATI HD7970 card so went to download the proprietary drivers, which is where I encountered a problem. When I installed the drivers, I'd load in to Windows and be presented with just my desktop background present, explorer.exe did not seem to have loaded and I couldn't even Control-Alt-Del to open up the task manager and start explorer afresh.

After a bit of googling I found the driver release notes (http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...easeNotes.aspx) which say I need to install SP1 and .Net SP1 before installing the drivers.

So, I restored Windows to pre-driver installation and fully updated everything with Windows Update and made sure the MB chip set drivers were installed, too. I then re-installed the drivers and encountered the same problem.

So now. I can get in to and use perfectly my Ubuntu installation (12.04) just fine (which is where I'm writing this from!) but Windows seems to be screwed. Could this be anything to do with also having Ubuntu installed at the same time? I'm guessing not as Windows essentially doesn't see Ubuntu and just sees its own 60GB partition, but I thought I'd check.

I think I'm essentially missing some crucial step in installing the drivers on to my system, and would appreciate any advice you guys can give me in getting this installed properly. Maybe try running the driver install as administrator would help? Look forward to hearing from you

J.

 

[Faladu]

You have a 7970, but had given up on Windows?

I would just wipe and drop 7 again, since you hadn't used it, could try System Recovery Console from the install DVD, just boot into it like a normal install but do repair and of course point to the right partition, if asked.

Basically with 7, you don't need to install a lot of drivers EXCEPT for video card after installing it, unless it's something out of the ordinary/NEW, to run. [huge amount of drivers on that install DVD]

XP of course, total opposite.

7's Boot Manager is coming up and you are choosing the OS at boot time, right? That's how it should be.

See this Tutorial:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/116098-dual-boot-windows-7-ubuntu.html

If your windows 7 install actually allows a command prompt, I would do:

SFC /scannow

To verify integrity of the windows install files.

Others with more experience with dual booting may chime in also, I have Linux Mint 14 running on my old PC, I refuse to use Linux on my main PC, I just know I will rarely touch it.

 

[jim89]

Ok so I re-installed Windows and loaded the drivers from the disk that came with the graphics card and got exactly the same problem - once the driver is installed I can't load in to a normal Windows desktop, just the background appears (so there are visuals working) but no explorer or anything similar (so no functionality - have to do a hard reset to get it to reboot).

Thoughts?

 

[bassfisher6522]

Always download the most current drivers from the vendors web page...in this case straight from AMD.

As Faladu mentioned, when booting up, are you given a choice to pick which OS to start up? How are you setting up your partitions for dual booting and what process did you use to partition your SSD? Are you sure you have enough room on the SSD for dual booting?

 

[jim89]

I've tried with both the most current drivers from the AMD/ATI site as well as those from the disk.

Yes I am given a choice which OS to pick from.

I used gParted to partition my SSD before installing either system.

Yes I have enough room on the SSD for dual booting, it's 120GB so I essentially have 2x60GB partitions to work with.