atikmdag - At a complete loss as to what to do.

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

Right, so I've been having the problem with atikmdag error for a couple of months now, and haven't been able to resolve it.

Things I've done:

Replaced:-

Motherboard
CPU
Hard Drives
RAM
GPU
Sound Card
Fans (lol, was clutching at straws tbh)
Optical Drive

Have done:

Re-installed Vista countless times.
Tried my old and new components in various combinations
Tried only one stick of RAM
Tried installing Vista with only 2GB installed
Updated all drivers
Updated motherboard BIOS (both motherboards)
Returned 4850 to OCUK on RMA (they found no error, got same card back)
Tried booting and installing Vista with bare minimum components plugged in.
Swapped out all replacable cables.
Had case side off and stuck a household blower fan in there in case of heat / airflow issues.
Disabled UAC
Tried removing various windows updates that are supposedly the cause.
God knows what else. Did I few different things and various re-installs of Vista over Xmas when I was bored, forgot what they were.
Turned off 2nd monitor.
Disabled Aero.

They're not in any order, tried a lot of them several times over with various different configurations. Anyway, basically, nothing fixed it.

So finally last week I'd decided to replace the PSU as it was the final thing I hadn't done, received it today. Shoved it in there, tidied up all the cables etc. Went to have a happy time gaming at long last, after all, it MUST be the PSU right, as I've tried everything else?.

What I got was a swift kick in the nuts as when I went to play the first game. ******* atikmdag error popped up in its damnable little ******* bubble over my notification area.

Right now I'm at a complete loss as to what to do. I've tried everything.

Any advice / suggestions at all?

 

[mercyless]

sorry to say, get rid of that card and get nvidia, seems the only thing you have'nt changed.

 

[Ross1234]

sorry to say, get rid of that card and get nvidia, seems the only thing you have'nt changed.

hahahahahahahahahahaha no.

 

[Lightnix]

Things "what to try" that come to mind are:

Make sure everything is running at stock.
Check temperatures on everything (including CPU, drivers are software after all).
Possibly see if the Windows 7 beta does the trick? Hey, you never know.

Yeah I'd be running out of ideas too at that point...

That said, while you've given us a rather thorough list of what you've done and have replaced, you haven't told us what parts you're using. Might help us find out the problem.

 

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

Oh sorry, yes, forgot to say, I replaced my 7800GT with the 4850 because the 7800 was doing the NVidia version of atikmdag error.

Worst. Luck. Ever.

Make sure everything is running at stock.
Check temperatures on everything (including CPU, drivers are software after all).
Possibly see if the Windows 7 beta does the trick? Hey, you never know.

Everything is at stock. I've even tried under clocking different bits.

Temps are all good. High 30's on CPU, GPU goes to about 60-70 stressed. But its kinda hard to stress it at the minute!

Can't use Windows 7. Program incompatibilities mean I cant run a few bits of software that I need to do work on.

Yeah I'd be running out of ideas too at that point...

That said, while you've given us a rather thorough list of what you've done and have replaced, you haven't told us what parts you're using. Might help us find out the problem.

Old bits:

Dual Core 6600
Abitr FP-IN9 Fatality Mobo
2GB Pair G.Skill RAM. In a box somewhere, will update exact timings later.
Some other generic DDR2 matched pair 2GB
GEIL 4GB DDR2 Matched Pair (switch all RAM types in and out of different "attempts", never bothered mixing types)
SB Audigy "Gamer"
7800GT MSI Might be a GTO or GTX, can't be arsed finding it.
Some Hitachi Deskstar PATA HDDs, various sizes.
Lite-On DVD-RW Lightscribe PATA (or similar, it draws on discs, whoooo, useless feature discs costs far too much and I never bothered with drawing on them anyway. Pen is quicker )
Corsair 520w HX/TX (The modular one, maybe thats HX, never remember)

New Bits:

Different dual core 6600. (nicked my dads He got mine, makes no difference to him.)
Gigabyte EP45 DS3 Mobo
Powercolor 4850 1GB (aka whatever colourful swearie pops into my head)
Some slightly more expensive SB Audigy "thing" (hate these, simply because of that god awful Alchemy program - both are currently residing in a box as Creative never could master making decent drivers)
Couple of 750GB SATA HDD's. I think they're Samsung, but I bought them OEM and I'm in no mood to pull the case apart again tonight to find out.
OcUK generic cheapo 4GB Matched Pair RAM. (have 4 different sets of these as it happens. None of them make a difference to frequency of error.)
Samsung DVD-RW SATA.
Corsair 650w HX/TX (The non modular one. Messy.)


Think thats it. All bits have been swapped in and out with other bits, in different combos, blah blah blah. No difference.

 

[95thrifles]

you tried disabling powerplay yet?

 

[Adrianr]

Have you actually tried another 4850? Or just the same one OCUK sent back to you?

When you've gone through all of that and you're still getting the same error the only thing left it could possibly be is the graphics card.. Surely? :S

I've got an old X600 running in this machine after swapping the motherboard without reinstalling Vista, not bothering to uninstall/install any drivers in safe mode (Nvidia drivers installed previously) and it's working fine.. If it can put up with that sort of mal-treatment i'm sure you would have solved the problem somewhere in your list there!

 

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

you tried disabling powerplay yet?

Nope, don't think so. Care to elaborate?

Have you actually tried another 4850? Or just the same one OCUK sent back to you?

Well I think its the same one, they did send it back after testing it to be OK. It does however irritatingly work fine in a different PC. : /

I've got an old X600 running in this machine after swapping the motherboard without reinstalling Vista, not bothering to uninstall/install any drivers in safe mode (Nvidia drivers installed previously) and it's working fine.. If it can put up with that sort of mal-treatment i'm sure you would have solved the problem somewhere in your list there!

After the 10th time over, it doesn't seem like such a chore anymore....

 

[MR.B]

Your've done all i did mate... look at my thread on this same issue here. That thread got very long and others had this issue too... theres lots of info in it so i recommened you take a look.

I had it with both a 4870 and a 4870X2. Both went back in the end. Sorted the problem by going Nvidia.
This is a big issue with ATI, and even now they still wont admit that this problems even exists. So dont waste any more time and just go NV.

I've had nothing like this with the NV cards i've had lately - GTX 260, GTX 280, GTX 295 - All work flawlessly.

 

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

What Nvidia card gives similar performance to a 4850?

 

[Lightnix]

What Nvidia card gives similar performance to a 4850?

9800 GTX+.

 

[95thrifles]

Nope, don't think so. Care to elaborate?

You need to create a profile, then edit it, go to C:\Users\"name"\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Profiles
your profiles are stored in there, right click and edit then scroll down to the bit that looks like this

<Feature name="CoreClockTarget_0">
<Property name="Want_0" value="50000" />
<Property name="Want_1" value="50000" />
<Property name="Want_2" value="75000" />

and edit the values so they all say 75000 like this

<Feature name="CoreClockTarget_0">
<Property name="Want_0" value="75000" />
<Property name="Want_1" value="75000" />
<Property name="Want_2" value="75000" />

Save and exit, then go into CCC and activate the profile, sometimes you have to do it twice, you should see the GPU clock at the bottom change from 500 to 750. basically this is a power saving feature, bit like you CPU's speedstep but fot your GPU, it is known to create issues and this disables it. Now Im not guaranteeing it will fix your problem but its worth a try.
N.B. you have to re-activate the profile each time you start windows, it doesnt remember it for some reason

Your've done all i did mate... look at my thread on this same issue here. That thread got very long and others had this issue too... theres lots of info in it so i recommened you take a look.

I had it with both a 4870 and a 4870X2. Both went back in the end. Sorted the problem by going Nvidia.
This is a big issue with ATI, and even now they still wont admit that this problems even exists. So dont waste any more time and just go NV.

I've had nothing like this with the NV cards i've had lately - GTX 260, GTX 280, GTX 295 - All work flawlessly.

This is utter bull, as someone else already said nvidia have there own equivalent problem with nvk...... whatever it is, and nvidia have known about theirs for just as long and havent been able to fix it either. both are strange in that they seem random, some people get effected by them some dont, so to say company A is better than B as it has no problems is untrue

 

[MR.B]

9800 GTX+.

I noticed the 8xxx/9xxx Series dont have as good colour reproduction as the 2xx Series or ATI's 4xxx series... although you need a very good monitor to really notice it.
If you do decide to go NV then i'd recommend at a GTX 260, but it's about £80 more.

 

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

You need to create a profile, then edit it, go to C:\Users\"name"\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Profiles
your profiles are stored in there, right click and edit then scroll down to the bit that looks like this

<Feature name="CoreClockTarget_0">
<Property name="Want_0" value="50000" />
<Property name="Want_1" value="50000" />
<Property name="Want_2" value="75000" />

and edit the values so they all say 75000 like this

<Feature name="CoreClockTarget_0">
<Property name="Want_0" value="75000" />
<Property name="Want_1" value="75000" />
<Property name="Want_2" value="75000" />

Save and exit, then go into CCC and activate the profile, sometimes you have to do it twice, you should see the GPU clock at the bottom change from 500 to 750. basically this is a power saving feature, bit like you CPU's speedstep but fot your GPU, it is known to create issues and this disables it. Now Im not guaranteeing it will fix your problem but its worth a try.
N.B. you have to re-activate the profile each time you start windows, it doesnt remember it for some reason

This seems to have worked, its just done a full run of 3D Mark for the first time in 2 months. Thanks very much!

My Want_2 values were different from yours at standard, and I assume this is the max clock speed that the GPU runs (normally), so I used those instead for Want_1 and Want_0. I also set the voltage Want_0 and Want_1 to the Want_2 values, was this necessary?

Also the fan speed max I think (<Feature name="FanSpeedPercentTarget_0">) to 50%, so I bumped that to 70% too just in case. I left the FanSpeedAlgorithm and FanSpeedRPMTarget the way they were, so will that still scale the fan speed up and down as normal when it needs it?

Was going to ask too if I could generate a "Default" profile by just saving all CCC settings (havent used ATi for many years) at Windows startup, so that I could drop it back to those after gaming or whatever.....but then theres no point is there, given that the atikmdag will pop up if I open a video, AutoCAD or Photoshop CS4.

So, just flick the profile over at startup and be done with it until next reboot? It wont affect the lifespan (not that I'd shed any tears for it) of the card, after all, its not going to be heating up anyway unless you actually doing something with it?

Thanks again!

Edit: Quite tempted to have a good old childish moan on the ATi forums about my woes.

 

[MR.B]

If i was you i'd leave 3D mark looping over night or leave a game running for hours. When i had this problem with 4870/X2 i thought i fixed it a couple of times only for it to happen again later on.

Ages ago i had a problem like this with a 1900 aswell, and to fix it it was basically as your've done above, you had to stop the card going into power saving mode. It's extremely pathetic that ATI cards still suffer from this issue it seems.

 

[Final8y]

If i was you i'd leave 3D mark looping over night or leave a game running for hours. When i had this problem with 4870/X2 i thought i fixed it a couple of times only for it to happen again later on.

Ages ago i had a problem like this with a 1900 aswell, and to fix it it was basically as your've done above, you had to stop the card going into power saving mode. It's extremely pathetic that ATI cards still suffer from this issue it seems.

Both NV & ATI suffer issues so that makes them both pathetic.

BTW i have had owned 1x1800xt 2x1900xt 5x3870 & never had that issue, so stop with your issues are also everyone else's.

 

[MR.B]

Both NV & ATI suffer issues so that makes them both pathetic.

BTW i have had owned 1x1800xt 2x1900xt 5x3870 & never had that issue, so stop with your issues are also everyone else's.

Oh here comes the ATI troll....

NV have not had issues like this since the release of Vista that they still have not fixed. They did not have i7 platform issues/crashing either - that ATI have finally only just fixed. They dont need to release countless "hot fixes" too.
And did i say everyone has those issues? no, but it's not like they're rare either. How many times do we have to go through this...

 

[londonbairn]

THese errors are generally not down to the GPU.

Try upgrading your BIOS and double check your VCORE. My experience has shown that too low a vcore gets these errors

 

[ViRuS2k]

hmm whats your pci express voltage at ? if its at 100 try 105 if its at 105 try 100

 

[Clairvoyant]

I went back to a single monitor set up. Not had one crash since I got rid of it.

(now I have gone and done it, I bet I start getting them again lol)