Vista and 7.3 Display driver atikmdag stopped responding error

the-bullet · Mar 29, 2007, 06:48 PM

With the 7.1/7.2's I was getting the error message "Display driver R300 stopped responding and has successfully recovered" whilst gaming. Now with the 7.3's I am getting an "Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered" error (Listed as warning in Event viewer). This doesn't occur with the Ati external event utility disabled, and also doesn't happen in XP. Anyone any ideas ?. Thanks....

thirtyandover · Apr 5, 2007, 09:57 PM

It was the same for me -
Only I also randomly get the BSOD saying something about bad-poll-header.

Even happened with Ati external event on.

Welshwarrior · Apr 6, 2007, 01:01 AM

I have the same problem.
When i am playing a game i get a blackscreen for a few secs then the error in the taskbar

With windows XP i used to get ATI Driver has stoped responding but to fix this i used older drivers. (5.2 iirc).

The vista problem is getting realy annoying. it doesnt allow me to play games or watch videos. without some lag or stuttering, the only way i found to cut down on the errors is to use windows classic theme. ( now its basicly windows xp agian

)

gcard : ATI X850 XTpe 256

junka · Apr 6, 2007, 09:46 AM

Vista + Cats 7.3 = Catastrophe, nightmarish hell and totally wucked up.
Stick with 7.2 until the release of 7.4

XP + 7.3= Nice, lovely and everything that is good in the world.

the-bullet · Apr 6, 2007, 07:31 PM

I never did (and still don't) get this problem under XP. Some games (eg MTW2, Rainbow 6 Vegas,Prey) play without problems. But other games (eg COD2, Black and White 2) suffer the "Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has succesfully recovered" error.

No other problems are being reported in the event viewer.

Jerrold · Apr 7, 2007, 08:04 AM

I just got the 7.3 beta update and installed it. Now I have the same problem here with the atikmdag recovery message after shutting down Windows Media Centre. All my BSOD problems have gone, but Half LIfe2 crashes after a few minutes and some games have awful stuttering. I guess the next while will tell the tale. I think we'll be seeing some weird stuff until they get Vista sorted out.

ASUS Commando
Core 2 Duo E6600
2 Gig Kingston PC6400 RAM
Sapphire X1950 XTX
Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
2 320 Gig Seagate SATA II Drives
1 Maxtor 250 Gig SATA II Drive
Pioneer DVD 105s
GCE-8400B CD-RW
AntecTruePower Trio 650 Watt PS
Antec 900 Case
Vista Ultimate 32 bit
(many problems)

Lunde · Apr 7, 2007, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by junka

XP + 7.3= Nice, lovely and everything that is good in the world.

can't agree with that,i had all sorts of trouble with the new 7.3 drivers on my xp machine
ati 7.3 is just........

Intelman · Apr 9, 2007, 05:46 AM

I get this error after quitting FEAR usually, sometimes when quitting C&C 3. I see "Display driver R300 stopped responding and has successfully recovered" more often though.

And BTW F.E.A.R. needs some tweaking still in Vista, I would like to see major gains in that game please!

BrunchMonolith · Apr 9, 2007, 04:14 PM

I have had this issue, or one similar, since Vista RC1.

It comprises the system locking up so hard that frequently it is unable to display even a BSOD. Running debugging tools (on the rare occasion that the system is able to write a memory dump) always points to atikmdag.sys as the culprit.

If it happens it'll happen within the first few hours of the system being on (could be 5 minutes after bootup, or 2 hours). If it "survives", it'll be rock solid from then onwards.
It usually (but not always) happens at the same time the mouse is clicked
It will occasionally happen during bootup
I also seem to have lost the VPU recover option in CCC, so when it crashes, it's gone

I have reported this issue to tech support and offered to provide minidumps but got no response. By chance I saw the AMD KB article about this. This article claims that it is due to using a mobo with a chipset that is unsupported in Vista, but offers no other information.

Pentium 4 3.2GHz with HT
Abit IS7-E2 mobo
Radeon 9700
1GB RAM
X-Fi Platinum
80GB SATA hard drive

The Intel 865PE chipset is supported in Vista by Intel and drivers are provided from both them and Abit.

hansolo77 · Apr 12, 2007, 09:14 PM

I, too, have this problem. I'm not really interested in having my system working to play high end video games. Low FPS and stuttering in my games is the least of my worries. I've built a custom HTPC for running Vista Media Center as my DVR. I've had the system and hardware now for almost 2 years and never had any problems with it. I got Vista a month ago and have been trying to get it to work correctly ever since. Media Center loads up and runs fine while in the interface, but whenever videos are playing the program crashes. I get the errors of the R300 driver stopped responding and restarted. When I look in the event viewer it points to the atikmdag file as being what failed. I've researched this on multiple forums and tried everything. Reinstalling drivers, disabling the card's secondary device, disabling the ATI event handler, disabling the hot key poller, setting the Vista theme/performance to basics, setting the resolution to 640x480, decreasing the BIOS' agp speed to 4x... nothing works. I read on one forum that this is a problem with compatibility with Vista's rendering of jpg's where it opens a vulnerability to a Denial of Service attack, yet I'm running a hardware and software firewall which should prevent such a thing from happening. I've also read on ATI's site that this is a known issue with certain motherboard chipsets that are incompatible with Vista. This can't be the case either because as I said, everything runs fine within the system until I'm running any kind of fullscreen video. These are my system specs:

ABIT KV-85 Motherboard (latest BIOS and chipset drivers)
AMD Sempron 2600+ CPU
2gb DDR2 400mhz RAM (2x1024mb)
1gb Corsair TurboFlash USB ReadyBoost drive
Custom Pagefile of 5000mb-15000mb on C:\
Onboard Audio
ATI Radion X800 Pro AGP (512mb)
Sharp Aquos 37" LCD TV (native res 1360x768) connected via VGA cable
Hauppauge PVR-150
1x500gb Samsung OEM SATA drive (C:\ is 50gb and E:\ is 450gb)
1x250gb Samsung OEM SATA drive (D:\ is 250gb)
Sony DRU-530 DVDR/W Drive
Vista Ultimate x86 (latest versions of everything from Windows Update)

*rhyinem* · Apr 13, 2007, 07:36 PM

Hey Folks,

Can some of you with this issue try your system with 1GB of RAM installed and see if there's the same issue? I'm trying to test this theory out...

Cheers!

hansolo77 · Apr 14, 2007, 03:56 AM

I actually had this problem when I had only 1 gb of ram. I recently bought 2gb and the readyboost drive to see if ram was my problem. I'm sad to say it doesn't appear to be a problem there. Another thing I was going to try to upgrade the CPU to a 3200+, but thought I'd hold off until there's more progress on this. I also need to report an apology. I mislabeled my videocard as having 512mb ram onboard.. it actually only has 256.

Here's a direct cut/paste from my error log:

Event Log->Application (Creates !Error)

Code:


The description for Event ID 1000 from source Application Error cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.
If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.
The following information was included with the event: 
ehshell.exe
6.0.6000.16386
4549b55e
atiumdva.dll
7.14.10.144
45e889e2
c0000005
000785f4
The substitution string for insert index (%1) could not be found

Event Log->System (Creates !Warning)

Code:


Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered.

Th3_VVr41th · Apr 14, 2007, 11:42 PM

Not sure if this will help anyone else, but I was getting all the same errors as well.
Did a fresh instal of vista, installed the 7.3's, then installed the 7.3 hotfix, still got the ATIKMDAG error in all games.

Noticed it only happened when the system/driver was trying to change the fan speed on my x1900xtx when the GPU temp started to rise.

Installed ATI tool 027 beta and used it to set just the fan speed on the card to 100% and I haven't had a problem since.

I posted this in another thread: http://www.hardwareheaven.com/1044512-post256.html.

I just finished playing a bunch of different games, testing it out, and not one crash or driver stop. Maybe it will work for others.

Indestructible · Apr 14, 2007, 11:55 PM

I've been having this particular problem since the first Vista drivers I installed (7.1). This only happens when exiting a game and returning to Windows, I played a Supreme Commander match for about 5 or 6 hours one day and it was perfect until I quit the game. Sometimes I get the stopped responding and recovery message, but most of the time the system just goes down hard and reboots. The only way I can get it to stop doing this is to re-install the whole OS and the drivers or disable the Ati External Event Utility (same fix they suggest for the BSOD loop issue with the 7.3s). Disabling that service seems to shuts down Overdrive as a side effect, which sucks but at least the system is stable.

I'm now on my third installation of Vista, this last run has been stable (about a month) until yesterday this problem started occuring out of nowhere yet again. I've been only using Catalyst 7.2 and 7.3 on this installation and both were fine until now. It doesn't seem like it's anything in particular that i'm installing to trigger this. The last thing I installed was C&C3 a week or two ago and i've been able to play it and quit without error just fine. Unless it was one of the Windows Updates that hosed it again, who knows. I've been trying to figure out the event or sequenece that triggers this to start occuring, but haven't been able to. System Restoring to point where it was working is no help either once the problem happens once.

I just hope the good people at ATI can get this figured out for 7.4 or it's back to XP for me again.

thirtyandover · Apr 15, 2007, 03:58 AM

And exactly where do we find this tool?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Th3_VVr41th

Not sure if this will help anyone else, but I was getting all the same errors as well.
Did a fresh instal of vista, installed the 7.3's, then installed the 7.3 hotfix, still got the ATIKMDAG error in all games.

Noticed it only happened when the system/driver was trying to change the fan speed on my x1900xtx when the GPU temp started to rise.

Installed ATI tool 027 beta and used it to set just the fan speed on the card to 100% and I haven't had a problem since.

I posted this in another thread: http://www.hardwareheaven.com/1044512-post256.html.

I just finished playing a bunch of different games, testing it out, and not one crash or driver stop. Maybe it will work for others.

Th3_VVr41th · Apr 15, 2007, 04:56 AM

Here you go:

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=26246

hansolo77 · Apr 15, 2007, 06:15 PM

Yeah I just google searched for it and found it. Didn't seem to work for me. Still crashes or locks up.

silvershnoop · Apr 15, 2007, 08:43 PM

I having a similar problem. Mine occurs when using Vista Media Centre (it may occur other times as well but I haven't noticed as I'm building a HTPC so thats its main use). The screen will pause, go black - the cursor will appear indicating the system is busy for about a second before returning to displaying the video. This can happen both during livetv and recorded and it can happen multiple times . Just checked the log and its happened 3 times in the last 30 mins!

Event Log shows the following Warning each time:
"Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

I'm using the 7.3 drivers

Here are my the system specs:

Vista Home Premium 32bit Version
AMD X2 4200+
Biostar TA690G (Radeon X1250 onboard)
2GB 677 Kingston Valueram
Hauppauge Nova-T 500
Western Digital 500Gb

hansolo77 · Apr 15, 2007, 09:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by silvershnoop

I having a similar problem. Mine occurs when using Vista Media Centre (it may occur other times as well but I haven't noticed as I'm building a HTPC so thats its main use). The screen will pause, go black - the cursor will appear indicating the system is busy for about a second before returning to displaying the video. This can happen both during livetv and recorded and it can happen multiple times . Just checked the log and its happened 3 times in the last 30 mins!

Event Log shows the following Warning each time:
"Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

I'm using the 7.3 drivers

Here are my the system specs:

Vista Home Premium 32bit Version
AMD X2 4200+
Biostar TA690G (Radeon X1250 onboard)
2GB 677 Kingston Valueram
Hauppauge Nova-T 500
Western Digital 500Gb

I'm glad to see somebody else is having this problem with Media Center. I was afraid my problem was isolated. Hopefully somebody will get this figured out for us.

*rhyinem* · Apr 16, 2007, 03:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Th3_VVr41th

Not sure if this will help anyone else, but I was getting all the same errors as well.
Did a fresh instal of vista, installed the 7.3's, then installed the 7.3 hotfix, still got the ATIKMDAG error in all games.

Noticed it only happened when the system/driver was trying to change the fan speed on my x1900xtx when the GPU temp started to rise.

Installed ATI tool 027 beta and used it to set just the fan speed on the card to 100% and I haven't had a problem since.

I posted this in another thread: http://www.hardwareheaven.com/1044512-post256.html.

I just finished playing a bunch of different games, testing it out, and not one crash or driver stop. Maybe it will work for others.

Obviously using ATI Tool is not supported directly by ATI but it does give us some more insight into the problem.

When running the ATI Tool, are you disabling or modifying any of the ATI system services like the External Event Utility or Hotkey Poller?

Cheers!

the-bullet · Apr 16, 2007, 04:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Th3_VVr41th

Not sure if this will help anyone else, but I was getting all the same errors as well.
Did a fresh instal of vista, installed the 7.3's, then installed the 7.3 hotfix, still got the ATIKMDAG error in all games.

Noticed it only happened when the system/driver was trying to change the fan speed on my x1900xtx when the GPU temp started to rise.

Installed ATI tool 027 beta and used it to set just the fan speed on the card to 100% and I haven't had a problem since.

I posted this in another thread: http://www.hardwareheaven.com/1044512-post256.html.

I just finished playing a bunch of different games, testing it out, and not one crash or driver stop. Maybe it will work for others.

I have the liquid cooled Toxic card so setting the fan to 100% is not an option

.

Th3_VVr41th · Apr 17, 2007, 08:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhyinem

When running the ATI Tool, are you disabling or modifying any of the ATI system services like the External Event Utility or Hotkey Poller?

Cheers!

All the ATI services are left alone, I don't stop or disable any of them.

I just finished playing through FEAR and FEAR XP, both of which constantly got the Driver not responding error within minutes of starting up, which made the game unplayable at all before. After finishing both (after HOURS of playing straight through) I disabled ATI tool, turning over control of the fan to the driver, and loaded them both up again, sure enough, they were unplayable with the driver "recovering" every 10 seconds or so.

As far as the cards using different cooling or aftermarket cooling, you have to realize, even though the header for fan control is not used on the card in most cases, the driver will still see changes in gpu temp, and try to access the hardware to control the fan, even though it's not there, or not conected to the card header itself. I'd still try setting the fan speed @100% with the toxic card, it could rule out my theory, or could prove it right. Doesn't hurt to try no?

I can re-create the driver not responding issue at will, and i can just as easily get rid of it every single time. Definitely has to be some issue with the drivers accessing the hardware in vista (I have both x32 & x64 Ultimate), I never had a problem like this in XP Pro.

Just for reference, every setting for 3D is maxed out in CCC and Catalyst AI. is disabled. I play all my games (that support it) at max resolution, 1680x1050, not a stutter. And again, I'm using the catalyst 7.3's with the hotfix.

hansolo77 · Apr 18, 2007, 05:25 AM

Just discovered, using the ATI Tool; my video drivers still crash after an extended use of the video accelerations. However, using the override and setting the 100% fan speed does seem to help some. The most recent crash I just suffered, I noticed something... The fan is quite loud on my card, so I can tell when it's running at full speed. When the video crashed, the fan suddenly went quite. I don't know if it completely shut off or not, but it definately slowed down. So the question then becomes; why does the fan suffer any changes when the driver fails at all? When using ATI tools, doesn't that OVERRIDE the drivers from ATI, and the fan speeds as well? If the video driver crashes, the tool should still have the fan running at full speed. I could be wrong though. Also, why does there even need to be drivers for the fan speed in the first place? Shouldn't the onboard rom in the GPU be able to handle the thermal temps and adjust the speed physically?

So here's my running theory. ATI's Vista drivers don't quite have a handle yet on compensating for increased heat on the GPU. Once it gets hot enough, the driver detects the increase in temperature, and rather than increasing the fan speed, it crashes. Windows detects the crash and restarts the driver, which in turn will sometimes restart the running program that crashed. If the driver fails to restart, or detect the increased temperature, the video card continues to run in its full speed until finally the built in failsafe on the cards hardware cause the card to just halt and lock up. The system is then unrecoverable and requires a direct reboot.

This theory works out best for my situation. The card runs fine while not doing anything fancy. While in Media Center on the menus, it doesn't take much GPU. However, once I start to watch any kind of video, the GPU begins tasking itself for the hardware decoding of MPEG's, and rendering of the video using DirectX video acceleration. Everything runs nice at first, then it starts to stutter and pixelate. Finally, the screen goes black, then restarts saying the driver failed and recovered. Other times, the screen will just lock up or go black, and fail to respond to mouse and keyboard actions, forcing a reset.

So whats the solution? ATI Tools does seem to work for a period of time. But as I said, it's not a full/permanent solution as it still crashes. I also noticed on this most recent crash, that after everything is rebooted, the ati tool still shows a forced override of 100% fan speed, although the fan is still not running at that speed until I press [Apply] again.

Well, sorry for the long story. I just felt that a little more detail on the most recent crash might help somebody else come up with a solution. Hope i does. Good luck everybody!

Th3_VVr41th · Apr 18, 2007, 09:29 PM

I'm not sure if you already posted the answer, but what CAT ver. are you using?

I'm only asking because i've been doing some intensive testing the past few days.
I installed a fresh HD, with 2 partitions. (Vista x32) each partition has it's own fresh install of Vista with the only difference between them being the ATI CAT ver. 7.2/7.3 w hotfix.

The vista install using the CAT 7.2's I'm having random driver errors (not responding) with ATI tool running the fan @ 100%, without it, the 7.2's throw up the driver errors almost like clockwork, but using the fan control under ATI tools, it gets it under some control, but not completely.

The partition with the 7.3's is 100% rock stable, no driver errors as long as I use ATI tool to control the fan, without it, again, I get the driver errors as before.

It appears there is a definite problem somewhere along the lines of a hardware access issue with the drivers under Vista. Something is definitely different about the 7.3 w/hotfix VS. the 7.2's aside from the BSOD on bootup fix.

As far as Vista x64, I want to test the drivers out as well, but for some odd reason I'm having problems getting x64 to install on the test rig again (x64 was already installed before, not one problem, all of a sudden, it refuses to recognise most of my hardware....Micro-$haft's buggy crap...ugghhh...)

hansolo77 · Apr 18, 2007, 11:43 PM

Yeah, I'm running 7.3. I've not tried using the hotfix yet, but I've downloaded it. Maybe I'll install it here in a few minutes and see if it makes any difference.

hansolo77 · Apr 19, 2007, 04:12 AM

ATI just posted up Catalyst 7.4. I just uninstalled my current drivers and download it. Will install it and report back if anything's changed.

thirtyandover · Apr 19, 2007, 04:35 PM

I'm using Catalyst 7.3 with hotfix, have External Event Utility disabled and ATI tool to control the fan.
I believe it only crashed once (froze everything so I had to do a hard reboot), since I started using the ATI tool, which is about one week ago.

hansolo77 · Apr 19, 2007, 05:14 PM

Just to report; the 7.4 drivers do NOT solve my problem. I'm stll getting the crashes and the same error message. Also, I've not seen it posted here yet... ATI's website does now have an article in their knowledge base acknowledging they're aware of this issue. Read about it here:

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/K...estionID=27116

Th3_VVr41th · Apr 19, 2007, 07:55 PM

The 7.4 Cats exhibit the EXACT same behavior as the 7.3-hotfix drivers do. They fail within minutes of starting ANY game with the ATIKMDAG error. Using ATI tool's fan control, I get the same results as I did with the 7.3's, everything is stable once I set the fan to 100%.

I didn't read the link you posted, but will do so now. :EDIT: the link you provided is no good, just returns an expired support session. *must have been a server error, works fine now* :EDIT:

I hope ATI will fix this soon, even though my system is rock stable playing games as long as I use ATI tool to control the fan, it is pretty loud. Not one game I play do I hear the fan on my card spin up as temps increase if I don't use the ATI tool, this presents a possability of hardware damage due to overheating, which is unacceptable. As far as the noise from the fan, I'll be driven nuts once I get my CF card back.

Indestructible · Apr 19, 2007, 08:11 PM

Thanks for the update guys. Looks like i'll stick with XP another month. No huge problems with the 7.4s in XP as far as my testing has went.

Mar 29, 2007, 06:48 PM	#1
the-bullet Come on you Spurs! Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 21 Rep Power: 0	Vista and 7.3 Display driver atikmdag stopped responding error With the 7.1/7.2's I was getting the error message "Display driver R300 stopped responding and has successfully recovered" whilst gaming. Now with the 7.3's I am getting an "Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered" error (Listed as warning in Event viewer). This doesn't occur with the Ati external event utility disabled, and also doesn't happen in XP. Anyone any ideas ?. Thanks....

Apr 6, 2007, 09:46 AM	#4
junka Zex Machine Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 199 Rep Power: 0	Vista + Cats 7.3 = Catastrophe, nightmarish hell and totally wucked up. Stick with 7.2 until the release of 7.4 XP + 7.3= Nice, lovely and everything that is good in the world. __________________

Apr 9, 2007, 04:14 PM	#9
BrunchMonolith DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	I have had this issue, or one similar, since Vista RC1. It comprises the system locking up so hard that frequently it is unable to display even a BSOD. Running debugging tools (on the rare occasion that the system is able to write a memory dump) always points to atikmdag.sys as the culprit. If it happens it'll happen within the first few hours of the system being on (could be 5 minutes after bootup, or 2 hours). If it "survives", it'll be rock solid from then onwards. It usually (but not always) happens at the same time the mouse is clicked It will occasionally happen during bootup I also seem to have lost the VPU recover option in CCC, so when it crashes, it's gone I have reported this issue to tech support and offered to provide minidumps but got no response. By chance I saw the AMD KB article about this. This article claims that it is due to using a mobo with a chipset that is unsupported in Vista, but offers no other information. Pentium 4 3.2GHz with HT Abit IS7-E2 mobo Radeon 9700 1GB RAM X-Fi Platinum 80GB SATA hard drive The Intel 865PE chipset is supported in Vista by Intel and drivers are provided from both them and Abit.

Apr 13, 2007, 07:36 PM	#11
rhyinem AMD Staff Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: toronto Posts: 8 Rep Power: 0	Hey Folks, Can some of you with this issue try your system with 1GB of RAM installed and see if there's the same issue? I'm trying to test this theory out... Cheers! __________________ I see dead pixels.

Apr 14, 2007, 03:56 AM	#12
hansolo77 DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 15 Rep Power: 0	I actually had this problem when I had only 1 gb of ram. I recently bought 2gb and the readyboost drive to see if ram was my problem. I'm sad to say it doesn't appear to be a problem there. Another thing I was going to try to upgrade the CPU to a 3200+, but thought I'd hold off until there's more progress on this. I also need to report an apology. I mislabeled my videocard as having 512mb ram onboard.. it actually only has 256. Here's a direct cut/paste from my error log: Event Log->Application (Creates !Error) Code: The description for Event ID 1000 from source Application Error cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer. If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event. The following information was included with the event: ehshell.exe 6.0.6000.16386 4549b55e atiumdva.dll 7.14.10.144 45e889e2 c0000005 000785f4 The substitution string for insert index (%1) could not be found Event Log->System (Creates !Warning) Code: Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered.

Apr 5, 2007, 09:57 PM	#2
thirtyandover DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Land of Hamlet Posts: 13 Rep Power: 0	It was the same for me - Only I also randomly get the BSOD saying something about bad-poll-header. Even happened with Ati external event on.

Apr 6, 2007, 01:01 AM	#3
Welshwarrior DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	I have the same problem. When i am playing a game i get a blackscreen for a few secs then the error in the taskbar With windows XP i used to get ATI Driver has stoped responding but to fix this i used older drivers. (5.2 iirc). The vista problem is getting realy annoying. it doesnt allow me to play games or watch videos. without some lag or stuttering, the only way i found to cut down on the errors is to use windows classic theme. ( now its basicly windows xp agian ) gcard : ATI X850 XTpe 256

Apr 6, 2007, 07:31 PM	#5
the-bullet Come on you Spurs! Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 21 Rep Power: 0	I never did (and still don't) get this problem under XP. Some games (eg MTW2, Rainbow 6 Vegas,Prey) play without problems. But other games (eg COD2, Black and White 2) suffer the "Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has succesfully recovered" error. No other problems are being reported in the event viewer.

Apr 7, 2007, 08:04 AM	#6
Jerrold DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: May 2003 Location: Edmonton AB, Canada Posts: 3 Rep Power: 0	I just got the 7.3 beta update and installed it. Now I have the same problem here with the atikmdag recovery message after shutting down Windows Media Centre. All my BSOD problems have gone, but Half LIfe2 crashes after a few minutes and some games have awful stuttering. I guess the next while will tell the tale. I think we'll be seeing some weird stuff until they get Vista sorted out. ASUS Commando Core 2 Duo E6600 2 Gig Kingston PC6400 RAM Sapphire X1950 XTX Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeMusic 2 320 Gig Seagate SATA II Drives 1 Maxtor 250 Gig SATA II Drive Pioneer DVD 105s GCE-8400B CD-RW AntecTruePower Trio 650 Watt PS Antec 900 Case Vista Ultimate 32 bit (many problems)

Apr 9, 2007, 05:46 AM	#8
Intelman DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 15 Rep Power: 0	I get this error after quitting FEAR usually, sometimes when quitting C&C 3. I see "Display driver R300 stopped responding and has successfully recovered" more often though. And BTW F.E.A.R. needs some tweaking still in Vista, I would like to see major gains in that game please!

Apr 12, 2007, 09:14 PM	#10
hansolo77 DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 15 Rep Power: 0	I, too, have this problem. I'm not really interested in having my system working to play high end video games. Low FPS and stuttering in my games is the least of my worries. I've built a custom HTPC for running Vista Media Center as my DVR. I've had the system and hardware now for almost 2 years and never had any problems with it. I got Vista a month ago and have been trying to get it to work correctly ever since. Media Center loads up and runs fine while in the interface, but whenever videos are playing the program crashes. I get the errors of the R300 driver stopped responding and restarted. When I look in the event viewer it points to the atikmdag file as being what failed. I've researched this on multiple forums and tried everything. Reinstalling drivers, disabling the card's secondary device, disabling the ATI event handler, disabling the hot key poller, setting the Vista theme/performance to basics, setting the resolution to 640x480, decreasing the BIOS' agp speed to 4x... nothing works. I read on one forum that this is a problem with compatibility with Vista's rendering of jpg's where it opens a vulnerability to a Denial of Service attack, yet I'm running a hardware and software firewall which should prevent such a thing from happening. I've also read on ATI's site that this is a known issue with certain motherboard chipsets that are incompatible with Vista. This can't be the case either because as I said, everything runs fine within the system until I'm running any kind of fullscreen video. These are my system specs: ABIT KV-85 Motherboard (latest BIOS and chipset drivers) AMD Sempron 2600+ CPU 2gb DDR2 400mhz RAM (2x1024mb) 1gb Corsair TurboFlash USB ReadyBoost drive Custom Pagefile of 5000mb-15000mb on C:\ Onboard Audio ATI Radion X800 Pro AGP (512mb) Sharp Aquos 37" LCD TV (native res 1360x768) connected via VGA cable Hauppauge PVR-150 1x500gb Samsung OEM SATA drive (C:\ is 50gb and E:\ is 450gb) 1x250gb Samsung OEM SATA drive (D:\ is 250gb) Sony DRU-530 DVDR/W Drive Vista Ultimate x86 (latest versions of everything from Windows Update)

Apr 14, 2007, 11:42 PM	#13
Th3_VVr41th DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: NYC, N.Y. Posts: 51 Rep Power: 19	Not sure if this will help anyone else, but I was getting all the same errors as well. Did a fresh instal of vista, installed the 7.3's, then installed the 7.3 hotfix, still got the ATIKMDAG error in all games. Noticed it only happened when the system/driver was trying to change the fan speed on my x1900xtx when the GPU temp started to rise. Installed ATI tool 027 beta and used it to set just the fan speed on the card to 100% and I haven't had a problem since. I posted this in another thread: http://www.hardwareheaven.com/1044512-post256.html. I just finished playing a bunch of different games, testing it out, and not one crash or driver stop. Maybe it will work for others.

Apr 14, 2007, 11:55 PM	#14
Indestructible DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 6 Rep Power: 0	I've been having this particular problem since the first Vista drivers I installed (7.1). This only happens when exiting a game and returning to Windows, I played a Supreme Commander match for about 5 or 6 hours one day and it was perfect until I quit the game. Sometimes I get the stopped responding and recovery message, but most of the time the system just goes down hard and reboots. The only way I can get it to stop doing this is to re-install the whole OS and the drivers or disable the Ati External Event Utility (same fix they suggest for the BSOD loop issue with the 7.3s). Disabling that service seems to shuts down Overdrive as a side effect, which sucks but at least the system is stable. I'm now on my third installation of Vista, this last run has been stable (about a month) until yesterday this problem started occuring out of nowhere yet again. I've been only using Catalyst 7.2 and 7.3 on this installation and both were fine until now. It doesn't seem like it's anything in particular that i'm installing to trigger this. The last thing I installed was C&C3 a week or two ago and i've been able to play it and quit without error just fine. Unless it was one of the Windows Updates that hosed it again, who knows. I've been trying to figure out the event or sequenece that triggers this to start occuring, but haven't been able to. System Restoring to point where it was working is no help either once the problem happens once. I just hope the good people at ATI can get this figured out for 7.4 or it's back to XP for me again.

Apr 15, 2007, 04:56 AM	#16
Th3_VVr41th DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: NYC, N.Y. Posts: 51 Rep Power: 19	Here you go: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=26246

Apr 15, 2007, 06:15 PM	#17
hansolo77 DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 15 Rep Power: 0	Yeah I just google searched for it and found it. Didn't seem to work for me. Still crashes or locks up.

Apr 15, 2007, 08:43 PM	#18
silvershnoop DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	I having a similar problem. Mine occurs when using Vista Media Centre (it may occur other times as well but I haven't noticed as I'm building a HTPC so thats its main use). The screen will pause, go black - the cursor will appear indicating the system is busy for about a second before returning to displaying the video. This can happen both during livetv and recorded and it can happen multiple times . Just checked the log and its happened 3 times in the last 30 mins! Event Log shows the following Warning each time: "Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered." I'm using the 7.3 drivers Here are my the system specs: Vista Home Premium 32bit Version AMD X2 4200+ Biostar TA690G (Radeon X1250 onboard) 2GB 677 Kingston Valueram Hauppauge Nova-T 500 Western Digital 500Gb

Apr 18, 2007, 05:25 AM	#23
hansolo77 DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 15 Rep Power: 0	Just discovered, using the ATI Tool; my video drivers still crash after an extended use of the video accelerations. However, using the override and setting the 100% fan speed does seem to help some. The most recent crash I just suffered, I noticed something... The fan is quite loud on my card, so I can tell when it's running at full speed. When the video crashed, the fan suddenly went quite. I don't know if it completely shut off or not, but it definately slowed down. So the question then becomes; why does the fan suffer any changes when the driver fails at all? When using ATI tools, doesn't that OVERRIDE the drivers from ATI, and the fan speeds as well? If the video driver crashes, the tool should still have the fan running at full speed. I could be wrong though. Also, why does there even need to be drivers for the fan speed in the first place? Shouldn't the onboard rom in the GPU be able to handle the thermal temps and adjust the speed physically? So here's my running theory. ATI's Vista drivers don't quite have a handle yet on compensating for increased heat on the GPU. Once it gets hot enough, the driver detects the increase in temperature, and rather than increasing the fan speed, it crashes. Windows detects the crash and restarts the driver, which in turn will sometimes restart the running program that crashed. If the driver fails to restart, or detect the increased temperature, the video card continues to run in its full speed until finally the built in failsafe on the cards hardware cause the card to just halt and lock up. The system is then unrecoverable and requires a direct reboot. This theory works out best for my situation. The card runs fine while not doing anything fancy. While in Media Center on the menus, it doesn't take much GPU. However, once I start to watch any kind of video, the GPU begins tasking itself for the hardware decoding of MPEG's, and rendering of the video using DirectX video acceleration. Everything runs nice at first, then it starts to stutter and pixelate. Finally, the screen goes black, then restarts saying the driver failed and recovered. Other times, the screen will just lock up or go black, and fail to respond to mouse and keyboard actions, forcing a reset. So whats the solution? ATI Tools does seem to work for a period of time. But as I said, it's not a full/permanent solution as it still crashes. I also noticed on this most recent crash, that after everything is rebooted, the ati tool still shows a forced override of 100% fan speed, although the fan is still not running at that speed until I press [Apply] again. Well, sorry for the long story. I just felt that a little more detail on the most recent crash might help somebody else come up with a solution. Hope i does. Good luck everybody!

Apr 18, 2007, 09:29 PM	#24
Th3_VVr41th DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: NYC, N.Y. Posts: 51 Rep Power: 19	I'm not sure if you already posted the answer, but what CAT ver. are you using? I'm only asking because i've been doing some intensive testing the past few days. I installed a fresh HD, with 2 partitions. (Vista x32) each partition has it's own fresh install of Vista with the only difference between them being the ATI CAT ver. 7.2/7.3 w hotfix. The vista install using the CAT 7.2's I'm having random driver errors (not responding) with ATI tool running the fan @ 100%, without it, the 7.2's throw up the driver errors almost like clockwork, but using the fan control under ATI tools, it gets it under some control, but not completely. The partition with the 7.3's is 100% rock stable, no driver errors as long as I use ATI tool to control the fan, without it, again, I get the driver errors as before. It appears there is a definite problem somewhere along the lines of a hardware access issue with the drivers under Vista. Something is definitely different about the 7.3 w/hotfix VS. the 7.2's aside from the BSOD on bootup fix. As far as Vista x64, I want to test the drivers out as well, but for some odd reason I'm having problems getting x64 to install on the test rig again (x64 was already installed before, not one problem, all of a sudden, it refuses to recognise most of my hardware....Micro-$haft's buggy crap...ugghhh...)

Apr 18, 2007, 11:43 PM	#25
hansolo77 DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 15 Rep Power: 0	Yeah, I'm running 7.3. I've not tried using the hotfix yet, but I've downloaded it. Maybe I'll install it here in a few minutes and see if it makes any difference.

Apr 19, 2007, 04:12 AM	#26
hansolo77 DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 15 Rep Power: 0	ATI just posted up Catalyst 7.4. I just uninstalled my current drivers and download it. Will install it and report back if anything's changed.

Apr 19, 2007, 04:35 PM	#27
thirtyandover DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Land of Hamlet Posts: 13 Rep Power: 0	I'm using Catalyst 7.3 with hotfix, have External Event Utility disabled and ATI tool to control the fan. I believe it only crashed once (froze everything so I had to do a hard reboot), since I started using the ATI tool, which is about one week ago.

Apr 19, 2007, 05:14 PM	#28
hansolo77 DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 15 Rep Power: 0	Just to report; the 7.4 drivers do NOT solve my problem. I'm stll getting the crashes and the same error message. Also, I've not seen it posted here yet... ATI's website does now have an article in their knowledge base acknowledging they're aware of this issue. Read about it here: http://support.ati.com/ics/support/K...estionID=27116

Apr 19, 2007, 07:55 PM	#29
Th3_VVr41th DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: NYC, N.Y. Posts: 51 Rep Power: 19	The 7.4 Cats exhibit the EXACT same behavior as the 7.3-hotfix drivers do. They fail within minutes of starting ANY game with the ATIKMDAG error. Using ATI tool's fan control, I get the same results as I did with the 7.3's, everything is stable once I set the fan to 100%. I didn't read the link you posted, but will do so now. :EDIT: the link you provided is no good, just returns an expired support session. must have been a server error, works fine now :EDIT: I hope ATI will fix this soon, even though my system is rock stable playing games as long as I use ATI tool to control the fan, it is pretty loud. Not one game I play do I hear the fan on my card spin up as temps increase if I don't use the ATI tool, this presents a possability of hardware damage due to overheating, which is unacceptable. As far as the noise from the fan, I'll be driven nuts once I get my CF card back. Last edited by Th3_VVr41th; Apr 19, 2007 at 08:10 PM.

Apr 19, 2007, 08:11 PM	#30
Indestructible DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 6 Rep Power: 0	Thanks for the update guys. Looks like i'll stick with XP another month. No huge problems with the 7.4s in XP as far as my testing has went.