Uninstalling ati software

Merlin5 · 12 Jan 2010 at 22:10

Every time I've uninstalled my cat drivers, CCC and install manager, my desktop screen doesn't change resolution or any visual quality, you'd never know it didn't have the graphics driver installed. When I then install whatever the latest cat/ccc/install manager is, all my settings from before seem to have been kept, such as gamma, brightness and contrast in ccc desktop properties. Just now I uninstalled 9.12 and installed the latest chipset driver for my motherboard, which happens to be cat 9.7. Same settings saved, and in ati overdrive, it says unlocked on 23rd december. I don't get it, how come these things are there when I've uninstalled everything first?

One of the reasons I would like to get rid of everything including settings and start afresh is because of occassional freeze ups in games. Is there some ati file on my pc that saves my settings, regardless of whether the drivers are installed or not? And what's the difference between motherboard ati chipset drivers and my ati graphics card drivers?

Tombo · 12 Jan 2010 at 22:20

Did you restart first?

Merlin5 · 12 Jan 2010 at 22:25

Yeah, I always reboot after uninstalling.

Tombo · 12 Jan 2010 at 22:38

Have a look into a driver cleaner of some sort? That helped when I last had to remove ATi drivers.

Merlin5 · 12 Jan 2010 at 22:56

Tombo said:
Have a look into a driver cleaner of some sort? That helped when I last had to remove ATi drivers.

What cleaner did you use? Also, are you saying that none of my settings should be saved after uninstalling ati software, and should my screen resolution and general visual quality change from 1920 x 1080 to something less? And what's the difference between the motherboard chipset drivers I got from gigabyte which seems to be just ati drivers, and graphics card drivers I get from ati? Seems to be the same thing.

FoxEye · 12 Jan 2010 at 22:58

these days it's common for uninstalls to leave registry entries and even files/folders behind.

you have to clean up afterwards by hand

Merlin5 · 12 Jan 2010 at 23:42

Ah, success!

I used driver sweeper and then again in safe mode. No traces of ati remain now according to that. Now my resolution has gone to 800x600 until I reinstall ati which is how I thought it's meant to be.

Interestingly though, driver sweeper found nvidia chipset drivers! :eek:

I've got rid of all them now.

I never installed anything to do with nvidia, well, except nvidia physx, although I'm not sure what program I installed which installed physx, and whether I'm even meant to have physx. I suppose there's always the possibility that the nvidia files could have been the cause for various freezups and occasional BSOD's?

My question now is this. Do I just install the latest 9.12 cats and CCC, or do I need to first install the motherboard chipset driver from gigabyte, (which is under the heading 'Chipset / SATA RAID' called: "motherboard_driver_chipset_amd_7series-v2.0_win7-64_novga.exe"
from http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/...?ProductID=3097&ost=windows+7+64bit#anchor_os

which seems to be just an earlier ati cat version 9.7? Or is there something else in the chipset driver that my motherboard needs?

FoxEye · 13 Jan 2010 at 00:32

well, it appears that ATI uses the name "Catalyst" for it's chipset drivers as well as its graphics card drivers

I didn't know that either.

Anyway, if you open that .exe file from Giga's site with WinRAR, you can see what's in it (it's a self extracting zip file).

in /packages/drivers there is a SB (southbridge) and NB folder, which would appear to contain your chipset drivers.

there is also a folder named "display" which is really odd, as it doesn't appear your motherboard has any integrated graphics, so why you'd be installing display drivers is anyone's guess

LoadsaMoney · 13 Jan 2010 at 00:45

Thats normal for all your settings to stay, its so you don't have to keep redoing them all again when you update drivers.

Merlin5 · 13 Jan 2010 at 01:09

FoxEye said:
well, it appears that ATI uses the name "Catalyst" for it's chipset drivers as well as its graphics card drivers I didn't know that either.

Anyway, if you open that .exe file from Giga's site with WinRAR, you can see what's in it (it's a self extracting zip file).

in /packages/drivers there is a SB (southbridge) and NB folder, which would appear to contain your chipset drivers.

there is also a folder named "display" which is really odd, as it doesn't appear your motherboard has any integrated graphics, so why you'd be installing display drivers is anyone's guess

Thanks Fox. I found the NB and SB folders. In the NB folder there's 4 atipcie files, cat, inf, sys and msi. The ATiPCIE.msi when I click on it says 'preparing to install.." then it says " you need to install catalyst install manager for this package, do you want to install catalyst install manager?" There's a 'NB-SB' folder as well with cat, inf and sys, but no msi to click on so I don't know how I would install the SB. Why would it ask me to install catalyst install manager when I already have it installed and the latest cat driver, any idea? If I do install install manager, that'll be overwriting mine and installing the older cat driver presumably?

Merlin5 · 13 Jan 2010 at 01:11

LoadsaMoney said:
Thats normal for all your settings to stay, its so you don't have to keep redoing them all again when you update drivers.

Ah I see.

What about all the instances of nvidia chipset drivers I found, could they have been to do with physx?

FoxEye · 13 Jan 2010 at 01:20

Merlin5 said:
Thanks Fox. I found the NB and SB folders. In the NB folder there's 4 atipcie files, cat, inf, sys and msi. The ATiPCIE.msi when I click on it says 'preparing to install.." then it says " you need to install catalyst install manager for this package, do you want to install catalyst install manager?" There's a 'NB-SB' folder as well with cat, inf and sys, but no msi to click on so I don't know how I would install the SB. Why would it ask me to install catalyst install manager when I already have it installed and the latest cat driver, any idea? If I do install install manager, that'll be overwriting mine and installing the older cat driver presumably?

Sorry mate I should have been clearer. I meant that those folders contained your drivers, but not that you should attempt to install them separately from those folders

I'd stlil run the main .exe (or if you extracted it, the setup.exe in the root folder) and simply tick the options for chipset drivers.

Doesn't matter that it calls itself Catalyst, it shouldn't affect your display drivers (also called Catalyst) in any way. Catalyst just seems to be an umbrella name ATI uses for all its drivers.

bigjimmyauk · 13 Jan 2010 at 01:39

Merlin5 said:
Ah I see.

What about all the instances of nvidia chipset drivers I found, could they have been to do with physx?

if i uninstall any nvidia chipset drivers from my system i can't do a lot at all can't browse web,use on board vga,can't read cpu temp as the drivers work the Smbus

FoxEye · 13 Jan 2010 at 01:44

bigjimmyauk said:
if i uninstall any nvidia chipset drivers from my system i can't do a lot at all can't browse web,use on board vga,can't read cpu temp as the drivers work the Smbus

Pardon me, but if your computer is what's in your sig, then you have an nForce (by nVidia) chipset.

He has an ATI 770 chipset.

Your nV chipset drivers might be essential to you, but I don't know why you'd have nV drivers loaded for an ATI chipset

bigjimmyauk · 13 Jan 2010 at 01:48

FoxEye said:
Pardon me, but if your computer is what's in your sig, then you have an nForce (by nVidia) chipset.

He has an ATI 770 chipset.

Your nV chipset drivers might be essential to you, but I don't know why you'd have nV drivers loaded for an ATI chipset

maybe you should read all his posts more clearly then get back to me

arc@css · 13 Jan 2010 at 01:53

Merlin5 said:
Ah I see.

What about all the instances of nvidia chipset drivers I found, could they have been to do with physx?

Possibly when you've installed a game previously where additional bits and bobs get thrown in, like for myself in the past with Cryostasis. Aegia files etc.

FoxEye · 13 Jan 2010 at 01:54

bigjimmyauk said:
maybe you should read all his posts more clearly then get back to me

OK, you'll have to spell it out for me because I'm not getting it. If you spotted something then share it

All I saw partaining to nV was a reference to physx. Physx needs an nV graphics card to run, and I thought he had both an ATI chipset + an ATI graphics card.

No reason in that case why he'd have anything nV installed.

Merlin5 · 13 Jan 2010 at 02:30

FoxEye said:
Sorry mate I should have been clearer. I meant that those folders contained your drivers, but not that you should attempt to install them separately from those folders

I'd stlil run the main .exe (or if you extracted it, the setup.exe in the root folder) and simply tick the options for chipset drivers.

Doesn't matter that it calls itself Catalyst, it shouldn't affect your display drivers (also called Catalyst) in any way. Catalyst just seems to be an umbrella name ATI uses for all its drivers.

Ah right, thanks FoxEye, you're right.

I didn't look at the options before in catalyst. It looks like it'll only install the two things in boxes which I'll select, and all the other ticks are non deselectable since they're obviously installed. Should there have been an option for southbridge as well?

FoxEye · 13 Jan 2010 at 02:54

Well... these days what I tend to do is hold off installing anything unless I know I need to.

I typically run devmgmt.msc and look for exclamation marks. These are all things that win7 doesn't have built-in drivers for.

After that, I'll look through the various things in the chipset drivers, google each one and see if it's essential/ useful. If not, it doesn't get installed

I haven't installed any chipset drivers on this machine. The two exclamation marks in devmgmt.msc relate to the gameport on the sound card (not important) and something else... midi port maybe.

win7 works just fine with its built in drivers for my chipset.

so I can't tell you exactly what you should install in your case without doing a lot of research first, and I'm off to bed

generally, if it ain't broke...

Merlin5 · 13 Jan 2010 at 02:58

Heh yeah. I'm just trying to get things working better and see if the occassional freeze ups and BSOD's I've had can be rectified, so I thought maybe reinstalling chipset drivers might help, but possibly not. Well, even just the very clean uninstall of the ati software might do the trick, I'll have to wait and see.