R60 Radeon X1400 Display Driver crashes Windows 7 BSOD

[Rincewindwiz]

Hi,
Ive inherited an R60 upon which I installed Windows 7 (and thereby hangs another tale!!). Windows installed the standard windows VGA graphics driver which seem to work fine and allow the full screen resolution to be used (1400x1050) and everything in the garden was rosy. It does get poor display performance ratings from some software that pops up occasionally so I guess the standard driver is not doing something but I don't use many graphically intense applications so its not an issue that I ever bothered with

Then windows update tried to install an updated version of the Radeon X1400 display drivers (8.561.0.0). I rebooted the machine and get a BSOD
STOP: 0x00000116 (0x8805B008,0x8241F3EE,0x00000000,0x00000002)
atikmdag.sys - Address8241F3EE base at 8240F000, Datestamp 493450ba

So I had to roll back the driver and continue under the old windows VGA driver.

Anyway, any ideas as to why the Radeon X1400 driver should BSOD the system and what I can do about it?

(I dont have the catalyst control center installed atikmdag.sv)

[GomJabbar]

I don't have the answer, but it seems it should work (in theory). Below is quoted from the Drivers and software - ThinkPad R60 page.

Code: Select all

Video	R60
(Machine types 9444, 9445, 9446, 9455, 9456, 9457, 9459, 9460, 9461, 9462, 9464)
ATI Radeon/FIREGL
Windows 7 (32-bit, 64-bit)	Use Windows 7 in-box driver

I have the older ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 in my T42, and the driver update from Windows 7 works fine here (has for months).

[GomJabbar]

Don't know if this will help. I found 2 drivers on Windows Update Catalog that are apparently the same versions, but one is nearly twice as large as the other. You might see if one of them will work.

http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/ ... TI%20X1400

[Rincewindwiz]

Indeed. I have read that page and it was another reason (that I should have mentioned) why I was happy to stick with the Windows 7 default VGA driver. However, it seems
1. Hard to believe that Microsoft does not know the driver (from 2008) crashes the R60.
2. IIRC officially the R60 does not support Windows 7
3. Given 1 and 2, it seems hard to believe they would set up Windows update to make the update.

Also, if I run the Lenovo diagnostic tests
Primary Surface test: Cannot Run
Non-local video memory test: Cannot run
Local Video Memory test: Cannot run
PCI Express status test: Passed
The 'Cannot Run' message seems odd to put it mildly.
The instructions under each tell me to (among other things) enable Direct3D acceleration.

However, Dxdiag the tells me I have no DirectX fatures (e.g. Directdraw; Direct3D) but I thought the X1400 was supposed to have decent graphics capabilities?

Disappointing but I guess I'll just put it in the (overflowing) 'Thank you Bill' box.

PS Was composing this when your suggestion re windows update catalogue arrived. I'll give it a go.

[GomJabbar]

See that you have the following installed from Lenovo (at least the first two).

ThinkPad PM driver
Hotkey Features Integration (latest version includes the necessary Lenovo System Interface Driver)
ThinkPad Active Protection System (air-bag for hard drive)
UltraNav Driver (TrackPoint and Touchpad drivers)
ThinkPad UltraNav Utility (for TrackPoint and Touchpad)

[Rincewindwiz]

Hmm slightly sticky water here since R60 drivers only available up to vista and not W7.
Should I give up and downgrade to XP or install vista drivers and pray?

[Rincewindwiz]

The two drivers on the windows update site are
20Mb AMD X64
10Mb X86
I presume the X86 is the one that caused the problems

I have installed
- Power Management (vista since no W7 exists)
- Hotkey features integration. (there is a W7 version)
- X86 drivers mentioned above
Active protection 1.72 is already installed (Vista only I think)
The touch Pad and trackpoint work just fine)

Rebooted and went to make the coffee.

I came back to watch the last bits of the boot process and about the same place as before (where the BSOD happened) it stopped with the message
Hardware Malfunction
Call your hardware vendor for support
NMI: Parity Check Memory Parity Error
*** the system has halted ***

I restored to before power management, rebooted and we were back to the STOP/BSOD error
I rebooted into safe mode; checked device manager to see where we were at and noticed that the display drivers were listed as ATI technologies 8.561.0.0 which is where I started!! But I thought Windows loaded standard drivers in safe mode? (I think I might have seen a message about Restore didn't work properly but sadly I didn't look carefully enough)

So restore back before everything - and discover that system restore will not work as suspected above.(Unspecified error 0x80070005). Could not access a file; probably due to antivirus)

Disable all antivirus (by renaming the directories!) and restore again. Reboot hangs at the same place. (Computer makes a rather strange buzzing sound).

Reboot into safe mode
Uninstall Thinkpad Power manager 3.3.1 (installed today)
Leave Thinkpad power management driver 1.73 (installed before the troubles.
Reboot

Got as far as the logon screen before the STOP/BSOD error
I think there may be some problem with the GPU. The screen display looked rather odd. 5 bands of skew/streak pixels across the screen. Not there when the VGA driver is used

Reboot into safe mode and change the screen driver back to VGA (It was still showing as being the X1400 driver). Reboot normally. and fortunately we are back to a working system

That was an exciting waste of an afternoon and it seems I shall have to settle for the standard W7 VGA driver with no directx hardware support.

Unless anyone has a better idea?

[GomJabbar]

Just a guess. Could be a problem with the Hardware Acceleration part of the GPU.

FWIW, I was referring to ACPI Power Management 1.60, not Power Manager 3.31 or 1.73. Nevertheless, according to the readme file, although ACPI Power Management 1.60 supports Windows 7 and it supports the R60, it does not support both together. On my T42 though, I do have ACPI Power Management 1.60 installed in Windows 7 - even though the T42 is in the same boat as the R60 (as can be seen from the readme file for 1.60).

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-64283

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4GXPEG

[Rincewindwiz]

OK Thanks
Have installed 1.6 power management without the end of the world occurring.
Have confirmed that graphics problem remains - although it is a different error this time. Well it was the first time. Read on . . .

Odd STOP error went away before I could write it down. Reboot and start normally and this time no stop error just a blank screen, a system hang and a buzzing sound as happened earlier.
Reboot and this time there is a normal screen display and then the system freezes with the buzzing sound

I think I just have to give up on the graphics issue. Bit odd that basic VGA graphics should work and the Directx stuff not work.

Thanks for your interest.

[GomJabbar]

One other thing you could try is Mobility Modder. If you try it, be sure and follow the instructions accurately.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=78171

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=75532

[GomJabbar]

I just saw this thread. The user in the last post has a R60 with the X1400.

http://www.sevenforums.com/drivers/7838 ... 0-x64.html

[Rincewindwiz]

Looks hopeful. I'll try it in the morning
Cheers

[Rincewindwiz]

hhhmm challenging

Not sure how Tillie made it work 'cos the links are to Vista 64bit
Change 64 to 32 in the URL and you get the 32 bit version.
OK the page then says can use Vista drivers in W7 but no official support.

X1400 is not on the list of Radeon products and searching for X1400 finds nothing!!!
There is also some warning about using Catalyst 9.3 or earlier in certain circumstances.
Oh what the hell. So I'll go for the latest (10.2) Its a 95Mb download - not 61mb.

So I did all that (steps 2,3,5,6,7) - it seems to want to install catalyst control centre and stuff other than just the drivers - and it installed driver 8.593.100

Rebooted several times and mostly got through to the logon screen but most actions than caused the system to hang optionally with a blank screen. At least the buzzing noise wasn't there.

So clearly Catalyst provides an improvement but I reckon the earlier comments about a duff GPU (or at least the accelerator parts/some of the memory) are correct.

Interesting voyage of discovery but its back to the VGA

Thanks for your help