Uninstalled a driver, another "hidden" one?

[RaiseR RoofeR]

For the past half-year when in games I would occasionally experience artifacting, and gray/black or colored vertical stripes which would promptly lead to a hard crash (either black or gray screen). Not an uncommon problem apparently. In the past, I have swapped my two cards` PCI slots, updated/cleaned out drivers numerously, updated my mobo BIOS, turning off Crossfire, cleaned out my computer and raised fan percentages (despite manageable temperatures). Now the crashing happens as soon as I launch a game. When I hard reboot, my the machine wouldn`t actually boot unless I turned it off and reset the CMOS on the back of the mobo. This happens in all of my games.

But I just found something strange recently. I uninstalled the latest driver through ATi's software, and for laughs I decided to boot up a game of Left 4 Dead. It ran perfectly fine. No crashes, nothing. I opened up GPU-Z and discovered that there's currently a driver installed on one (or both??) of the cards: "atiumdag 8.791.0.0 (Catalyst 10.11)". What?!

The ATi install manager detects nothing. I tried using Driver Sweeper, which wiped everything out, then installed the latest driver (11.3). The crashing started up again. I uninstalled 11.3, and found 10.11 still on there. So how the heck do I get rid of this thing? Do you think this ghost 10.11 driver is causing these problems?

Thanks.

 

[H-street]

what OS? it might be the built in driver for windows 7

 

[Spooony]

For the past half-year when in games I would occasionally experience artifacting, and gray/black or colored vertical stripes which would promptly lead to a hard crash (either black or gray screen). Not an uncommon problem apparently. In the past, I have swapped my two cards` PCI slots, updated/cleaned out drivers numerously, updated my mobo BIOS, turning off Crossfire, cleaned out my computer and raised fan percentages (despite manageable temperatures). Now the crashing happens as soon as I launch a game. When I hard reboot, my the machine wouldn`t actually boot unless I turned it off and reset the CMOS on the back of the mobo. This happens in all of my games.

But I just found something strange recently. I uninstalled the latest driver through ATi's software, and for laughs I decided to boot up a game of Left 4 Dead. It ran perfectly fine. No crashes, nothing. I opened up GPU-Z and discovered that there's currently a driver installed on one (or both??) of the cards: "atiumdag 8.791.0.0 (Catalyst 10.11)". What?!

The ATi install manager detects nothing. I tried using Driver Sweeper, which wiped everything out, then installed the latest driver (11.3). The crashing started up again. I uninstalled 11.3, and found 10.11 still on there. So how the heck do I get rid of this thing? Do you think this ghost 10.11 driver is causing these problems?

Thanks.

Go to your system folder the drivers folder. Look for the ati files

 

[RaiseR RoofeR]

Go to your system folder the drivers folder. Look for the ati files

Yup, you're onto something.

Turns out I'm an idiot and didn't run Driver Sweeper in safe mode, leaving "atiumdag.dll" and serveral other similar files untouched when I did the initial sweep. I just ran it in safe mode, and the driver appears to be removed for good. Now, let's see if the crashing stops.

Thanks for your help fellas.

 

[RaiseR RoofeR]

Damn, I'm getting screen flickering and tearing again. I don't think the crashing is going to go away.

 

[RaiseR RoofeR]

So I uninstalled the driver, rebooted, uninstalled again from device manager, went into safe mode, wiped the driver clean using driver sweeper, uninstalled the "fractured" cards listed in device manager again, rebooted, then suddenly I get a pop-up saying "Windows needs to be restarted for the changes to take place" or something of the sort. I click "okay", and suddenly I'm running 10.11 again. I didn't even install anything! What the hell is doing this?! Is Windows autoinstalling drivers for my cards?

:edit: For the record, all of my games run perfectly fine with this "ghost driver". I went into device manager, and clicked on "update driver" for my cards through it, at which point they updated to 11.2. Everything ran flawlessly. The problem, though, is Crossfire, and I can't run it unless I install using the CCC route. CCC doesn't detect that I'm running any drivers, oddly.

 

[H-street]

So I uninstalled the driver, rebooted, uninstalled again from device manager, went into safe mode, wiped the driver clean using driver sweeper, uninstalled the "fractured" cards listed in device manager again, rebooted, then suddenly I get a pop-up saying "Windows needs to be restarted for the changes to take place" or something of the sort. I click "okay", and suddenly I'm running 10.11 again. I didn't even install anything! What the hell is doing this?! Is Windows autoinstalling drivers for my cards?

its probably the default windows 7 driver for your card, even in vista a cat version was included for ati.

 

[RaiseR RoofeR]

So after updating through device manager (i.e. Windows 7 64-bit) to 11.2 and it running fine, I decided to download CCC, just by itself. It detected 11.2, but the problems are popping up. Crossfire or not. So something simply doesn't like CCC that's causing the machine to crash.

I tried installing ATi Tray Tools instead, but it wouldn't let me enable Crossfire, and it halved my FPS.

Interesting.

 

[RaiseR RoofeR]

This problem is directly related to Catalyst Control Center. Even when Crossfire is off in it.

Uninstalling it causes no problems, but I can't run Crossfire. This isn't good. Maybe it's a setting? Catalyst A.I. or something? I'm hesitant to spend hours by trial and error.

 

[reaper12]

Personally, I would never recommend anybody to use driver sweeper or driver cleaner. They create more problems than they solve as you are finding out.

I would download the full drivers from the AMD website, the catalyst 11.3's which are out now and install them, if they don't install then try getting the full 11.2s and installing them.