video driver conflict?

I just upgraded from an 8800GT to an HD4870. The video driver now appears to crash randomly and then blue screen the computer. The blue screen returns a problem with the video driver.

I'm not sure if this is the card thats defective or if it is a driver conflict, since I had a 9600GT that would blue screen similarly, but much more often.

I have tried cleaning off my the old Nvidia driver with driver cleaner, but that made things worse now that I have invalid registry entries. I tired to clean up those entries with a reg cleaner but was unable to fix the problem.

Anyways, does anyone have any good suggestions before I reformat my computer?

A system restore, if you have a recent one from before all this, may help with the registry.

I would then remove all traces of drivers for both cards, carefully, and install fresh.

Okay so I gave that a go and it turns out that its a lot harder to remove Nvidia stuff than I thought...especially forceware drivers.

I think I am just going to reformat my computer. I've got multiple problems at the moment and I think a fresh start is what it needs.

Thanks for your help.

Good luck!

Merry Christmas, Spike, and a Nissan New Year!

Alright so my computer is back online and it seems that the reformat helped the problem a little. The video driver doesn't crash as often anymore, but it still does bluescreen occasionally. I am going to rule out a hardware failure and say that its just still and early build of the video drivers.

That's odd. I have the 4870 x2 and haven't encountered any bluescreens, even with the earlier drivers.

Any clues in the Event Log?

atikmdag is the file in the crash log. That's the thing with drivers, it doesn't play nice with every possible system config. So it could be totally stable with one config, but totally unstable in another. I just have to keep updating my drivers in hope that they further improve the drivers.

Are you using the most recent Catalyst drivers, or custom ones? Did you install the drivers from the CD that came with the card, and then update Catalyst, or just install Catalyst?

When I put the 4850 in it recognized it just fine and started using the pre-existing most recent Catalyst, but the card didn't work quite right until I ran the CD anyway and it installed the Northbridge etc drivers.

There are north bridge drivers on the CD? Okay I am checking that out when I get home lol. I've always just thrown the CD aside because the driver on that is usually out dated anyways. I am running the most recent version of the driver.

Yeah. I wasn't going to use the disc at all at first since I had already installed the latest Catalyst for the onboard HD3200. But when the display didn't really look like the 4850 was working quite right, I ran the installer from the disc. It skipped the Catalyst drivers automatically but put in the bridge stuff etc.

I've to say I am pleased with how the installer for Catalyst has improved over time. It didn't use to be very bright.