ATI / Catalyst 10.4: Screen Flashes
By
Back_Blast,
Posted on: 2010-05-21 23:49 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
64 bit, and thanks for all of the advice @_@ this is such an odd error.
Indeed it is.
I know for a fact that CoH Helper runs fine on the 64-bit version of Windows 7 since I've run it on three different installations including Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Hold up, CoH Helper decided to play along after a reinstall. Will edit this post momentarily with the report.
Hmm. It says under Monitor: "Driver Version: 8.682.1.0". Shouldn't it be 10.5 or so? Or is the Catalyst version different from the Monitor Driver Version
---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.2.0.2---
DxDiag gathered at May 29, 2010 15:51 (-07:00)
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_gdr.100226-1909)
System Manufacturer: Compal
System Model: NBLB2
BIOS: Default System BIOS
Central Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 520 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory: 4096MB
.Net Memory Report: 2809MB out of 4021MB available
Page File: 6448MB (1593MB currently in use)
C Drive: (ST9320423AS) 250849MB out of 305141MB (82%) free
D Drive: (TSSTcorp CDDVDW TS-L633A) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 11
DirectX Diag version: 6.01.7600.16385 (64-bit version)
Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.
Monitor:
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650
Manufacturer / Chip: ATI Technologies Inc. / ATI display adapter (0x68C1)
Video Memory: 2769 MB
Driver Version: 8.682.1.0
Driver Date: 12/9/2009 10:48:00 PM
Driver Language: English
Sound Device Description: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Driver File: RTKVHD64.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.6028
Driver Date: 1/18/2010 2:14:56 AM
WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: Compal
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: NBLB2
Motherboard Version: Base Board Version
BIOS Manufacturer: INSYDE
BIOS Name: Default System BIOS
BIOS Version: INTEL - 1
BIOS Release: 20100128000000.000000+000
Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1024x768
3D Resolution: 1024x768 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: Yes
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: Yes
Physics Quality: High
Maximum Particles: 50000
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No
Anti-aliasing: Unknown (0)
Anisotropic Filtering: 4x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: High quality
Bloom: 1.000 (turned on)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: Medium?
World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 1.000
Entity Detail Level: 1.000
Shadows Enabled: No
Shadow Mode: Shadow maps
Shadow Map Shader: Low quality
Environmental Reflections: Low quality
Advanced Occlusion Settings: No
Ambient Occlusion: High performance
Occlusion Strength: Slight
Blur: Fast
Ambient Resolution: High performance
Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: No
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes
Audio Mode: Performance
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 1.000
Music Sound Volume: 0.600
Show Advanced Graphics Options: No
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.500
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: Unknown bytes/second
Current Game Version: 1800.201003300904.25T5r
Installation Directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\City of Heroes
Mod files in the Data directory
No modifications found
I'm thinking that's the 9.12 driver based on the date. I can never tell by looking at the version number but their numbering system is basically a year.month format.
And yeah, that driver would have issues with Issue 17 I believe.
I'd recommend downloading but not installing yet the 10.5 drivers, downloading and installing (but not running yet) the Driver Sweeper program, then uninstalling the ATI software and drivers from Programs and Features in Control Panel.
Reboot the computer into Safe Mode and run Driver Sweeper. Have it remove any ATI Display entries it finds (except for the drivers you just downloaded). Reboot when prompted and let it load into normal Windows mode. Windows 7 will install drivers with no chance for you to stop it, so I generally wait until that is finished and go to Device Manager and uninstall those drivers but don't reboot.
At this point, run the driver installation package you downloaded earlier. I'd launch the game and see how things look, go into the Options and change the shader detail, apply the change then change the shader detail back to what it was. This was what I did to get CoH Helper to report correctly on my Shader Detail on one system and get rid of the ? in the report.
If it's still looking odd or acting odd, run CoH Helper again and post the results.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Quote:
Okay, few things. First off, there was a hotfix for 9.12 which resolved this issue, I noticed it because it mentioned specifically CoH flickering (even though I didn't think we had 9.12). but when we attempted to download the 9.12 hotfix, we got the error "file not found." Could this be an error on our side, or is it that ATI has removed the file from their site now that the driver version is irrelevant? Hotfix was here. |
Originally Posted by Texas Justice
I'm thinking that's the 9.12 driver based on the date. I can never tell by looking at the version number but their numbering system is basically a year.month format.
And yeah, that driver would have issues with Issue 17 I believe. I'd recommend downloading but not installing yet the 10.5 drivers, downloading and installing (but not running yet) the Driver Sweeper program, then uninstalling the ATI software and drivers from Programs and Features in Control Panel. Reboot the computer into Safe Mode and run Driver Sweeper. Have it remove any ATI Display entries it finds (except for the drivers you just downloaded). Reboot when prompted and let it load into normal Windows mode. Windows 7 will install drivers with no chance for you to stop it, so I generally wait until that is finished and go to Device Manager and uninstall those drivers but don't reboot. At this point, run the driver installation package you downloaded earlier. I'd launch the game and see how things look, go into the Options and change the shader detail, apply the change then change the shader detail back to what it was. This was what I did to get CoH Helper to report correctly on my Shader Detail on one system and get rid of the ? in the report. If it's still looking odd or acting odd, run CoH Helper again and post the results. |
I mean it might just be easier to get the hotfix lol.
Two:At one point we tried to remove her drivers so that we could install new ones. When we tried it ourselves (in Windows normal mode, NOT in safe mode. Also used Catalyst uninstaller, not Driver Sweeper) the monitor blew up everything about 400% (as in, windows and the start menu and everything were 4 times their normal size, it was as if the monitor was only showing the bottom 1/4 of a gigantic desktop). When we then attempted to install the new drivers we had downloaded, and rebooted, the giant-blown-up-screen did not get fixed. Playing with Resolution and Display did nothing to fix it. We had to System Restore. So I assume that we won't run into that problem if we try uninstalling the drivers in Safe Mode?
Sorry. We are majorly computer inept sometimes haha.
We'll be sure to create a System Restore point just in case we noob it up again lol.
I've never had to uninstall drivers in Safe Mode for a video card. Just use the ATI Software utility in Programs and Features to uninstall it in normal Windows mode. THEN reboot to Safe mode to run Driver Sweeper.
The reason for running Driver Sweeper in safe mode is that when you uninstall drivers, files are often left on the computer and Driver Sweeper gets rid of those files so that you don't get a corrupt installation. Running it in Safe Mode makes sure that the files are not in use and locked.
When you installed the new drivers and still had the UglyNoDriverInstalled look and you couldn't change the screen resolution it was likely due to a corrupt installation or old files interfering with the installation.
As for the 9.12 drivers, those were OK before Issue 17 but don't work as well with Ultra Mode, whether you enable any of the settings or not. That's one of the reasons for updating to the newer drivers.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Okay. We'll try this out in an hour or two and post back tomorrow or later tonight on the results. Thanks again for all of the help ^_^ it is much appreciated.
Eesh. We still got the gigantic icons "Ugly No Drivers" screen.
Guess we might be WoW stranded for a while lol. We'll try it a few more times, but we've tried it all to little success. We uninstalled ATI and got the ugly screen, jumped to Safe Mode to run Driver Sweeper, rebooted to normal mode, installed the 10.5 drivers, and rebooted again.
Screen still ugly.
System Restore awaaaay lol.
I just cannot tell what the problem is. We uninstall through the Uninstaller. We driver sweep it with Driver Sweeper. And everything is clean and good. But the new driver install just will not go.
Bah. This is driving me nuts.
There is no reason it should act like that.
Hopefully someone can look at this with fresh eyes and spot something I'm missing.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Quote:
Okay, did you try the Calalyst Mobility drivers that I linked? Or the standard desktop drivers from game.amd.com?|
Originally Posted by Phoenix_Wrath
Eesh. We still got the gigantic icons "Ugly No Drivers" screen.
Guess we might be WoW stranded for a while lol. We'll try it a few more times, but we've tried it all to little success. We uninstalled ATI and got the ugly screen, jumped to Safe Mode to run Driver Sweeper, rebooted to normal mode, installed the 10.5 drivers, and rebooted again. Screen still ugly. System Restore awaaaay lol. I just cannot tell what the problem is. We uninstall through the Uninstaller. We driver sweep it with Driver Sweeper. And everything is clean and good. But the new driver install just will not go. |
If the Catalyst Mobility drivers will not install, I suspect your laptop chassis is not supported. AMD's reference driver is known to be incompatible with chassis from Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic.
Off the top of my head, I don't recognize the chassis you bought from Ibuypower, one of the reasons I would personally never buy from them as they tend to sell Korean or Japanese knockoffs. The chassis they list doesn't match any 15" laptop chassis with a RadeonHD 5x00 series card from any of the ODM's I know AMD's driver is compatible with: Clevo, Compal, Acer, AsusTek, and Foxconn.
That being said, you might not be entirely out of luck. The Mobiltiy modder should be able to mod the standard desktop driver to install on your laptop: http://www.gamingheaven.net/modtool.php
****
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
Having forcibly removed myself from the tech side of things, I'm prompted to ask due to some PMs I've received:
What exactly are we supposed to be telling folks with legacy hardware that can't install the 10.4 or later catalyst versions? Tough titties? Upgrade or suffer? Open a ticket with NCSoft support? |
About the only legacy hardware that is a real issue with the changes to the engine are Intel hardware... and well...
/emote Kevin Butler on
I mean, come'on, it's INTEL, are you INSANE?
/emote Kevin Butler off
If somebody is having an issue with the legacy engine not running correctly on the 9.3.1 drivers, yes, file a support ticket with NCSoft.
It's the Compal NBLB2 system. Oddly enough, it doesn't list on the Products list on their website but it does list in the Drivers section.
Just looking at Compal's site makes me leery of their systems. I just get a bad vibe off the site and it looks like a really cheap setup.
Looking at the downloads and seeing how sparse the driver files are for the system doesn't make me feel much better.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Quote:
woah? It is a Compal? |
Originally Posted by Texas Justice
It's the Compal NBLB2 system. Oddly enough, it doesn't list on the Products list on their website but it does list in the Drivers section.
Just looking at Compal's site makes me leery of their systems. I just get a bad vibe off the site and it looks like a really cheap setup. Looking at the downloads and seeing how sparse the driver files are for the system doesn't make me feel much better. |
Well. Thanks for verifying that I wasn't imagining things by NOT seeing seeing it.
Quote:
I thought it was a typo of Compaq at first, but found their website when I googled the name.
|
Originally Posted by Phoenix_Wrath
---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.2.0.2--- DxDiag gathered at May 29, 2010 15:51 (-07:00) Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_gdr.100226-1909) System Manufacturer: Compal System Model: NBLB2 BIOS: Default System BIOS Central Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 520 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz Memory: 4096MB .Net Memory Report: 2809MB out of 4021MB available ----snip---- WMI Information Motherboard Manufacturer: Compal Motherboard Model: (empty) Motherboard Product: NBLB2 Motherboard Version: Base Board Version BIOS Manufacturer: INSYDE BIOS Name: Default System BIOS BIOS Version: INTEL - 1 BIOS Release: 20100128000000.000000+000 ----snip----- |
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Quote:
Oig. I skip over pretty much everything CoH helper says since most of it's pretty useless. Explains why I didn't see the Compal data in there. |
Originally Posted by Texas Justice
I thought it was a typo of Compaq at first, but found their website when I googled the name.
|
Anyways, Compal is one of the larger ODM's for... lower... tier products. I don't want to call them junk since Compal actually does make some pretty good equipment every now and then. I'm wondering if the thing Pheonix has is like the Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic laptops, using a non-standard implementation of the RadeonHD chipset...
man I hope I didn't buy a dud computer for her ><.
At least it runs everything except CoH very smoothly....
And yeah, we most definitely have been download/installing the Mobility drivers.
On this note... for those of us who are not computer wise >< what IS a good site for buying custom computers? Or just a good site for buying a gaming computer in general.
On the Compal site, in the Downloads listing for Drivers there is a video driver that looks to be the Catalyst 10.1 drivers (judging by the date in the inf files). It is labeled as "vga driver for TV tuner issue" but since it appears to be the 10.1 driver it should be good to install.
Here is the direct link to the file download. The page doesn't give a full address so I'd have to give step by step instructions on getting to the driver. The direct link is just easier. Since this is specifically for the NBLB2 system you have, it should install with no problems. If it gives the same UglyNoDrivers look after install, I'd suspect a hardware issue and would be contacting iBuyPower very fast to have the system replaced.
If it does install and you can adjust the resolution as you normally would but you still have the same problems of flickering, I think I'd still call them about getting it replaced.
If it does install, you might want to try downloading the regular 10.5 driver and the Mobility Modder tool and using the instructions on that site to modify the standard driver to allow it to install.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Hmm, you think that'll work? We'll have to give it a try then. ^_^
It's late tonight and we've got a long trip ahead of us next week, so we'll try it out when we return and be sure to post back to this thread for this results. Till then we'll stop being a burden on all you wonderful peoples' consciousses lol.
And hey, thank you all again for all of the help and tech support. It means a lot to us 
.
Hey, you aren't being a burden. I just don't like it when things don't act the way they should. You've been fine, it's your computer that's not acting the way it should.
Enjoy the trip, relax, don't worry about the game. It'll be here when you get back.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
I've yet to have it happen on a Windows 7 system (coming up with that error) so it makes me suspect other issues (including the OS load done by the OEM). A HiJackThis report might be useful here.
The .Net Framework 3.5 is supposed to include the .Net Framework 2.0 and 3.0 both. I would look at other areas first.
Redownload CoH Helper after getting rid of the old one. It's possible that something corrupted in the download. Temporarily shut off any anti-virus and firewall software after you download it. If you are running any anti-spyware software that has active monitoring, disable it as well. It could be that one of these is interfering with CoH Helper.
If it still gives errors, I'd send a PM to Zloth about it with as much information as you can give about your computer. Out of curiosity, is this a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows 7?
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.