BSOD caused by atikmdag.sys

[Srittenberg]

I've been experiencing BSODs for a month or so. They seem to happen randomly. No new hardware that I'm aware of. I'm attaching the zip file created by the file capture tool listed in the instructions. I'm grateful for any help received. -- Steve

 

[Laith]

Hiya and welcome to SevenForums!rb:

BugCheck 116, {fffffa80035aa010, fffff88003c13834, 0, 2}

*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for atikmdag.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for atikmdag.sys
Probably caused by : atikmdag.sys ( atikmdag+12834 )

The problem is caused by your graphics driver. Run Display Driver Uninstaller(DDU)
Make sure you tick the Uninstall C:/AMD and C:/NIVIDA folders while you are in DDU when you are done running DDU install your graphics driver again and you should be good to go! This is the guide for DDU: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/367109-display-driver-uninstaller-how-use.html

 

[Srittenberg]

Thank you. Unfortunately, following you guidance has been a near disaster this morning. Luckily, I saw that another member reminded people to create a restore point beforehand. I did so and therefore could recover. Here are a few issues I had with following your guidance (and to be fair, the DDU guidance): I accessed the Display Drive Uninstaller: How to use and printed as a pdf so I could read it after re-booting to safe mode. Nope. Could not view the embedded links so Adobe Reader crashed each time. I went to download DDU from the Guru 3.D link. The directions said to download 14.3 but the filename was listed as 14.0 Confusing. So I downloaded a more recent version. I dont mean to be rude but you did not include any punctuation in your reply. That made your guidance harder to follow. Your instructions said "make sure you tick the "uninstall C:/AMD and C:/NVIDIA". Umm, there were no boxes to tick or untick. Just a pull down option so I could choose one at a time. So I only unstalled one driver. The Uninstaller guidance did not mention that DDU would interfere with Windows Automatic Driver Installation. And didn't provide me with time to figure out which option to select. I uninstalled what the AMD driver and so I was left with no driver. Windows Update didn't try to re-install one after I rebooted. Casually telling me "install your graphics driver again" assumed that I knew how and where to do so. Once the old drivers were uninstalled, I could not figure out which ones to install. After DDU uninstalled, I was left with a generic driver set to 800x600. My second monitor was not listed.

I have learned something through this process and will probably try again if I can figure out either how to re-enable Windows to detect the correct graphics drivers or if I can determine them manually. Before restoring to the previous system access point, I checked some of the DDU logs to see if the old drivers were listed. The logs were too cryptic for me.

Thank you for all the support that you provide to people. Some of my issues today relate to the guidance you specifically provided and some to the DDU guidance. And probably most to my own technical shortcomings. Maybe I can contact the person who designed DDU to address of a couple of my questions. In the future, I recommend that you either add more punctuation or separate lines between your statements. And some guidance about the impact of DDU (generic, low resolution driver installed) and how to reinstall drivers would be very helpful to others.

I appreciate your help. I do not want to appear to be ungrateful for the gift of free technical support but unfortunately I only received about half the information that I needed.

I cannot mark this as solved at the moment. Perhaps after I do more digging about how to reinstall drivers, run DDU again and reinstall the drivers again. But it is premature to do so now.

 

[Laith]

That's a long post! Thanks for the feedback, it is very much appreciated
So what is the current state? Does it still BSOD?
Something i didn't understand was have you installed the drivers or not?

 

[Srittenberg]

I thought I replied but perhaps I dozed off and accidentally erased it. :-(

Since I restored this morning, no BSODs but I expect them eventually. Problem only happens about once a day. Next step is to learn how/where to download & install the drivers I need. After that, I'll be ready to re-run DDU and re-install the drivers. Then I'll probably need to wait a day or two before marking as solved.

 

[Laith]

You can download them from AMDs website.