New ATI Raedon drivers don't work for my card

[Slipknot]

I have a 32MB raedon (SDR) raedon in my spare system. I noticed that they just released new drivers for the card yesterday, so i figured i'd give them a try since it isn't an experince i get to do with ATI products (god they suck when it comes to drivers).
After downloading, extracting and running the setup program in the <DIR> it created I got a message that the driver isn't supported by my card. Hum very strange i thought.
So i tried a manual installation by trying to update the current video driver (which i had already changed back to standard VGA). To my surprise, when windows read the INF file, it only found support for ATI's new video cards 7000+ and up......none of the previous ATI raedon cards are listed in the INF file........now that sucks

Has anyone else had this problem too?

BTW, I checked all the other older raedon cards on the ATI site and they all link to the new driver, but the driver doesnt' work for any of them.

[Bob The Great]

I belive your problem lies in ATI changing the designation of the cards. The Radeon DDR used to be called just that, but now it's something like the 7500. I don't remember it's exact designation though. This might be your problem.

[Slipknot]

so you are saying that they renamed the older cards to fall in line with teh 7500 and 8500? I will look into this

[Mad Al]

I just did the same thing last night trying to get my computer working after a week of wiping it.
One hour of downloading and NOTHING to show for it.
The Europe support centre for ATI just happens to be in my town so they will get a call on Monday morning.
I will post the results of that on Monday night.

Alan

[Seggybop]

On my computer, when I tried to install the drivers I got the message saying that it was unsupported. So I went to use the windows driver install thing. It showed that there were no compatible drivers. I told it to show all drivers anyway. Then, it listed my card. I told it to install even though it said it was incompatible again and it works fine.

[Slipknot]

what do you mean by "windows driver install thing"...do you mean the add ne hardware wizard in control panel?

[Seggybop]

Yes. "Add New Hardware" in control panel. I use that and tell it to search for drivers in the folder the driver install from ati made, I think on mine it was C:\ati multimedia\(some code)\support\atidrive. Or close to that anyway. It told me none if it was compatible and showed the selection window as empty. I told it to show all devices instead of only compatible ones and then I was able to select my card.

[Mad Al]

Well its Monday night and I have a short story.
I rang the ATI support line and was told to use the 7200 driver for my Radeon 32MB SDR card.
Only problem was there were 6 different 7200 entries.
I have WindowsME installed and it would not let me remove the previous version of the drivers. Trying to install on top of the old ones just crashed and the normal installer will not let you continue.
Anyway trying my luck again at installing resulted in losing any sort of screen at startup.
Result - reinstall WindowsME after wiping the hard disk. Luckly I had backed up. VERY IMPORTANT.
After getting back up I ran the ADD NEW HARDWARE wizard - specified the location of the drivers (Which were backed up on CD) I got the list of drivers. Choosing the first 7200 entry on the list worked and guess what it installed.
Next I restored all the other drivers for sound, modem etc., including my new web cam.
At the moment 1 hour later everything seems to work.
My conclusion - (must be careful here) is that to install the drivers you must first remove the old ones. Secondly the 7200 driver option seems to work for the Radeon 32MB SDR card. I cannot speculate what will work for other systems and other cards.

BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!

Mad Al

[Slipknot]

Okay all,
I stumbled accross a fix for the driver problem. First off, I uninstalled those dang 4.13.7189 drivers that I downloaded for ATI's webiste. (I use a 32MD SDR radeon). I then "stumbled" across a news message about new ATI drivers at www.rage3d.com. The site said the drivers are located here :

http://www.maxreboot.com/download.php?op=viewdownload&cid=16

It is VERY interesting to note that the driver version is 4.13.7199-Win9x. How in the world does maxboot's site have newer drivers then ATI's website. I went to ATI's website but could find these particular drivers anywhere. Anyway, I installed them without any problems. No errors this time about the card not being supported. All my games are working fine too. Hope this helps everyone out