Solved Deleted Display driver in Device manager need it back

[OriginalMcBlood]

This is a very small portion of a very long story. The long story is BSOD reported as problems with atikmpag.sys but lets not get into that.

The point of this post is in an attempt to remedy the above I went into device manager and removed completely the device driver for ATI 7800 series. It has rolled back to VGA driver and certain applications will not run.

Clicking on update drivers "search on line" gives me back "no updates found" or whatever the correct phrasing of that is. So the question is how do I get back the win 7 ATI 7800 series driver?

I would like to do this with out having to resort to a system restore but I will if necessary. Kept this brief but if anything else needed please let me know. Oh and I'm on win 7 64bit.

I am sure this info will be somewhere in this forum but I can not find it hence the post.

I hope it is not something as simple as scan for hardware changes and then update drivers because it just occurred to me that I did not try that ( I do not have access to that PC just now).

Any and all help appreciated.
cheers

 

[Golden]

I hope it is not something as simple as scan for hardware changes and then update drivers because it just occurred to me that I did not try that

Hi,

It could very well be just as you stated above - first port of call is to perform a Windows Update, which will attempt to download and install a Microsoft-signed driver for your display card.

Try that, and let us know what happens.

Regards,
Golden

 

[OriginalMcBlood]

Hi thanks for the quick reply. Yeah I tried that, no joy. I even reset the update history using method 2 from this post http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/91738-windows-update-reset.html.

Technically I did not roll the driver back I just removed the 7800 series driver and rebooted and on reboot windows installed the VGA driver. I had previously rolled back without removing and then updated the driver and it had re-installed the 7800 series driver but my atikmdag.sys problem persisted. Thinking it was possibly a corrupt driver that had downloaded I deleted it completely and rebooted fully expecting it to download a fresh one when I tried to update. That did not happen.

Thanks,

 

[stormy13]

Unless something is really messed up you should be able to go to AMD and get the latest driver for it,

AMD Graphics Drivers & Software

 

[OriginalMcBlood]

Unless something is really messed up you should be able to go to AMD and get the latest driver for it,

AMD Graphics Drivers & Software

Hi thanks for the reply,
it is not the driver supplied by AMD, that is there and installed. Believe me it is there I have been through so many uninstall, reboot, boot to safe mode, driver sweeper, reboot, boot to safe mode C Cleaner to clean stuff out of the registry that driver sweeper missed, reboot re install AMD drivers (CCC) cycles you would not believe. It is the driver in windows if this makes sense, unless I am missing something fundamental which is possible; the ignorant are not always aware that they are ignorant. I am entirely open to the possibility that I am missing something. I would not class myself as a noob but I am happy to admit that there is an awful lot out there I know nothing about.

I said that this was but a small part to a long story I could go on and it would involve swapping out my GPUs, swapping out PSU's, memtest, prime 95, chk dsk, sfc SCANNOW, BIOS fiddling, re-seating hardware and cables, relocating GPU'(s) to other PCIE slots, powersettings, taking off possible conflicting software, the only thing I have not tried yet is playing about with any voltages to components. (well there are millions of things I have not tried yet but you get the jist) oh and it is not heat related either I run at 19 degrees (CPU core) at idle and 30 ish at full load I have 6 120 mm case fans.

That is an aside I will get to the bottom of my erratic BSOD on intense gaming problem eventually; as you can see I have ruled a lot of stuff out already. For this thread I just want the driver I had back. I did alot of other stuff as well last night, that helped and I do not want to undo it with a system restore. I know I should have created a restore point as I changed each thing but I got a bit blase and lazy about it.

cheers,

 

[stormy13]

Believe me it is there I have been through so many uninstall, reboot, boot to safe mode, driver sweeper, reboot, boot to safe mode C Cleaner to clean stuff out of the registry that driver sweeper missed

That could be your problem right there. That program has been known to remove more than it should, usually leaving the only recourse to the damage it has caused being a complete re-install of Windows as System Restore nor running sfc will fix it. If you are really lucky and it was only run once and have the right version of Driver Sweeper, it has its own built in restore feature (no idea how well it works though). Driver Sweeper should only be used as a last result.

Clicking on update drivers "search on line" gives me back "no updates found"

That only works when Windows "knows" what the card is, and the HD 7800 series came out well after Windows 7 so there is no native support for it. Also the update option in Device Manager only looks at what is available from the Windows Update database. It also can mess up how a device works by offering what is actually on older driver than what is available from the device manufacturer.

 

[OriginalMcBlood]

Thanks stormy.

A system restore did bring the driver back but I understand what you are saying about needing a full clean install. I have known that this is ultimately what would/ should sort the BSOD issues but I am desperately trying to avoid it. I am sat with about 500GB of stuff on my system drive, another 500GB on my data drive ( I moved the location of my documents etc.. onto my other drive) and just under another 500 GB of back up images on an other partition on that data drive.

It would take a very long time to get my PC back to where it is now from a clean install of windows 7. It should sort out the BSOD issue but I am torn about the effort and reward.

When it ultimately crashes and I have no option but a fresh install and I have lost all my stuff I will no doubt look back on this and bemoan my laziness.

Thanks to you and Golden for your input and keep up the good work .

Right I am off to see if I can find a post, a simple one, that maybe I could help with I try to give back where I can. I have learnt what I know through trial and error, pain and stupid mistakes ( a little knowledge is a dangerous thing) and forums like this. I know what it is like when you hit a brick wall and reach the end of your resources and a little experience and a nod in the right direction can really help.