atikmdag error message/computer freeze.

[casey]

I have a brand new Toshiba laptop. Very shorly after buying it i began
getting the error message "Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has
successfully recovered" multiple times followed by a complete lockup of the
entire system.
I've updated all drivers but to no avail.
I've poked around both Microsoft and ATI's support pages and each seem to be
saying it's a problem steming from the other company.
I just want my computer to work and don't want to have to take it back under
warranty and start from scratch.
Anyone know of a simple fix?
I'm getting the impression this isn't a problem specific to me.

[RyanHell078]

What exactly are you trying to use. This sounds like a non-Vista
program. I say non-Vista as in a rare occurance of software that is not
Vista friendly. I bought a Vista HP lappy in 2007 and it ran FLAWLESSLY
and I love Vista now, howver I never played any games other than WOW on
it. I assume it is a program. I wish I could be more help faster for
you. Stick here and wait it out. Sooner than later someone will help you
out. Probably isn't too bad. I had that issue myself but it just went
away! I did nothing. My girl has the new Toshiba and I love that thing.
Good choice!

[V Green]

A long shot here...

ATI uses a driver interface that is based on .NET
Framework. Letaly, there have been several patches
to .NET that have been causing various problems. You
may have picked up one or two with Windoes Updates.

I would do a System Restore back as far as you can and
see if the problem goes away.

[casey]

Thanks for the vote of support Ryan,
So far the problem isn't specific to any one program or even type of
program.
I'm running Vista Ultimate. It shuts down running; Explorer, Office or just
about any other program. This happens on average twice a day or more. A
simple google search of the error message yelds tons of others with the same
problem and even a few dedicated web sites. I've scrolled through the many
possible solutions but the ones I've tried haven't helped and the ones I
haven't seem pretty invasive given my skills/knoledge and the fact that they
don't seem to work for a large number of those who attmept them.
The frusterating thing I'm not really coming close to taxing the system. I'm
just expecting to have it function for basic tasks out of the box and it
can't even do that!

I appreciate you advice thoug and I'll keep listening here for advice.

[casey]

Thanks V
I don't know, this problem has been happening since I bought the computer
and I'd hope that if Microsoft was including something in it's Windows
Updates that was causing a problem, that they'd quickly undo or correct it in
the next update. I'm thinking this is a bigger problem than a buggy update.

Display driver atikmdag stopped
ATI wants to push this off as a hardware problem like RAM, Motherboard
etc. They are just buying time till they get a fix. I get the problem in
Vista 64 but not on XP with the same computer. I also get it on a
different computer with a different ATI video card. I think AMD must
have cut the ATI development money. They used to have the best drivers.

I also have a new Toshiba laptop and experience the same problem. Soon
after i bought it the screen would blank out, then a message would say
'atikmday display driver stopped working correctly and has recovered.'
Don't know if the problem is serious or not but would like to help it.


*display driver stopped working*, I get that on my system about every
4th or 5th boot. It happens fairly quickly. I reboot and have no problem
for a long time. I don't believe it is hardware and I don't OC my video
card.

well, it wasn't able to find the drivers from 10/2008, but it found the
ones from 8/2008 8.530.0.0. how can i test for that error? also, i'm
assuming that i won't be able to OC my card now?

[Level5Owner]

My System Engineer and I have after many headaches and ALOT of tylenol
have Identified the apparent Cause of this Problem.

What it is Not -

Vista ( 32bit or 64bit ), XP ( 32bit or 64bit ), .NET framework, System
Memory, Heat, Dual Monitors ( Extended Desktop or Clone Mode ) .

What it appears to be -

The ATI CATALYST CONTROL PANEL SOFTWARE ( Not the Stand Alone Driver )

Basis For Conclusion -

We tested all My Systems ( 4 of them ,2 XP ( 1 64bit and 1 32bit ) 2
VISTA Ultimate ( 1 32bit and 1 64bit ) from the ground up with NUMEROUS
CLEAN installs of the BASE OS to try and reproduce the Error After every
Software install. We did this with the OS Updated and With the OS Naked.
The Error only Occured AFTER installing the CATALYST CONTROL PANEL
SOFTWARE.
We then Did Clean installs on All the Systems and Installed ONLY the
CATALYST SOFTWARE to see if it was a Conflict with any other software.
The Error occured Almost Immediatly.

We then Purged the Systems of All ATI Software and Tried to install the
Software in the Individual packages the ATI does Provide. As soon as we
installed the CATALYST CONTROL PANEL SOFTWARE the ERROR Occured.

We thenPurged the Systems again of the ATI SOFTWARE and Installed ONLY
THE DRIVER. We ran the Systems for 2 weeks the ATIKMDAG HAS STOPPED
RESPONDING AND RECOVERED Error did not reassert itself.

If you have the CATALYST CONTROL PANEL INSTALLED and Do a Seach of Your
Primary hard Drive you will Find that the ATIKMDAG.SV file is ONLY found
in the CATALYST CONTROL PANEL SOFTWARE PACKAGE.

If you Remove the CATALYST CONTROL PANEL you will remove ATIKMDAG.SV
from your System and this solves at least this Issue.

The problem seems to be an encoding error in how the CATALYST control
Panel Software Interacts with ICQ's in relation to The OS instructions.

It should be Noted that ATI apparently is aware of the Issue as they
Offer a Standalone Download of the Graphics Driver even thought they
will not Officially Acknowledge the Issue.

My System Engineer and I both have Notified ATI of our Findings. They
have not responded.

OF NOTE -

Graphics Performance Does not appear to suffer when runnig ONLY the
Graphics Driver. The Only Differance is that You Can Not use the
Features that the CATALYST CONTROL PANEL SOFTWARE provides. However for
graphics Stability it is a Small Price to pay.

Also Before you Chuck your ATI graphics Card For an NVIDIA Graphics
Card note that NVIDIA Graphics Cards Present a Simalar Error and More
Importantly NVIDIA DOES NOT OFFER a Standalone DRIVER, you take thier
CONTROL PANEL or Nothing.

Hopefully ATI will address this issue in a Newer Release of the
CATALYST CONTROL PANEL.


--
Level5Owner

*Mobo - INTEL X38BT*
*CPU - INTEL QX6850 QuadCore 3Ghz*
*Ram - 8GB ( 4 x 2GB ) OCZ DDR3 Platnium Editon 1333Mhz*
*Sound - X-FI Fatality Pro Edition*
*Graphics - ATI RADEON 3870 512mb GDDR 4*
*Storage - 2 WD Enterprise Editon 500 GB W/RAFF*
*Chassis - THERMATAKE ARMOR LCS*
*WaterCooling - CPU, NorthBridge, Graphics*

[jrk]

Try this, casey:

a very simple way I have found to bypass the problem is this:

start your system up, let it load, then simply logoff. Log back on.

Problem completely goes away for me no matter what and doesn't return until
you restart the system.

At which point you can simply just log off and log on again and be good to
go.


If this helps anybody else, please let me know. I have currently been
investigating and going back and forth with high level Microsoft support for
several weeks now. There are aware of, and are investigating this issue. They
acknowledge my fix.... that a log off and log on temporarily solves the
issue.

[Matt☺]

Wth is there any solution to this problem at all... apart from changeing
all your computer about isnt there a way you can stop it just by changing
like settings.
i have windows vista home premium 32 bit edition and a ati radeon x1650
series graphics card.
the two apparent downloads that are ment to fix this problem from microsoft
apparently did not fit my vista type i dont know why so dont ask im not sure
if it is thta its 32 bit or what.
sooo plz if anyone knows how to fix it without all the complicated bits plz
share

thanks matt

[U66888]

I unistall all ATI stuff and install only the
Graphics Driver as Level5Owner indicated and since then the irritating message "Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has
successfully recovered" disappeared from my system.
Thanks Level5Owner.
Since ATI and MS don't fix this bug, I think this solution is the best for some system stability.

Paul

MB - ASUS P5WDH Deluxe
CPU - INTEL Core 2 Extreme X6800 2.93Ghz
RAM - 4GB ( 4 x 1GB ) Kingston PC2-8500 DDR2 1066Mhz
Graphics - ATI RADEON 3870 512Mb
Storage - 2 WD Caviar Green SATA 750GB RAID1
VISTA 64 - SP1
FSX - SP2

[JoshuaPorter23]

I only get this message when I'm trying to watch youtube videos on full
screen. I don't play many games, but I do watch dvd's however and I
never get this message while watching them. I don't get them unless I'm
trying to watch flash full screen. I just got the most recent update for
my ATI and now my flash flickers as it's playing. This is ridiculous!
Will we ever have a fix to this problem?! Get on the ball guys!


--
JoshuaPorter23

[Darkvette]

Ok,

I followed the directions and so far so good. I uninstalled the CCC, ran
DriverSweeper and reinstalled just the Display Driver. I noticed though that
atikmdag.sys still installed with the Display Driver only.

What I did was renamed the file to atikmdag.sys.old. I did call ATI Tech
Support and they told me it's a hardware issue, which I don't believe. They
did tell me that the file is the Windows Kernel Mode Driver. But, he also
told me that Windows runs in User Mode, so basically, the file isn't needed a
whole lot anyway. We'll see if I get any crashes or not.

[lokeey]

well, interestingly enough I did just about everything and after about,
oh i don't know, 15 mins, i get the error again that my display driver
has stopped working. luckily though, my system didn't blue screen on me
like all the other times, so i must be getting closer to the fix.

so here is everything that i have done.


- un-installed some patch update KB952287
- removed all ati software including driver
- rebooted
- reinstalled ati driver only
- rebooted
- removed ati console manager that is required to install driver
- ran ccleaner, twice
- ran registry mechanic

i'm all out of options here. i don't have my system overclocked. i did
have my card overclocked at one point, but everything is currently at
stock settings. i'm about to roll back to xp. oh, and it did it again as
I was typing this out.

[lokeey]

lokeey;944614 Wrote:
> well, interestingly enough I did just about everything and after about,
> oh i don't know, 15 mins, i get the error again that my display driver
> has stopped working. luckily though, my system didn't blue screen on me
> like all the other times, so i must be getting closer to the fix.
>
> so here is everything that i have done.
>
> > > >
- un-installed some patch update KB952287
- removed all ati software including driver
- rebooted
- reinstalled ati driver only
- rebooted
- removed ati console manager that is required to install driver
- ran ccleaner, twice
- ran registry mechanic
> > >
> i'm all out of options here. i don't have my system overclocked. i
> did have my card overclocked at one point, but everything is currently
> at stock settings. i'm about to roll back to xp. oh, and it did it
> again as I was typing this out.

sorry, i forgot to include my system specs

Gigabyte X38-DQ6
Intel Q6600
G.Skill RAM 2x2GB (4GB)
Asus ATI Radeon HD3870 512MB
Corsair HX620
WD Raptors 2x74GB (raid0)
WD 200GB


--
lokeey

[lokeey]

chuckbam;945527 Wrote:
> > lokeey;945516 Wrote:
> > well, it wasn't able to find the drivers from 10/2008, but it found the
> > ones from 8/2008 8.530.0.0. how can i test for that error? also, i'm
> > assuming that i won't be able to OC my card now?> >
>
> You can OC if you know how to flash a bios. That is how I did it.
> Changed a fan speed as well. It can be tricky, so don't attempt it if
> you are not 100000 % sure how to do it. You can disable your card.
>
> Since I took the drivers from the MS search, I have not had ONE
> crash. It is that darn CCC. Also, I became mad when I could not load
> the 8.12 with the HD 3870 and Vista 64. I will not work. I cleaned the
> ATI mess up and gone this way and I am done fighting video drivers.

well, i did flash the bios some time last year and was overclocking
with out any problems, but then again that was on XP. i'm a lil
disappointed in this whole vista/ati mess. and that's after i waited a
year and a half to make the switch to vista. maybe i should have looked
around a lil harder for issues prior to installing the OS.

i tried to use rivatuner, but that seemed to flake out after not
recognizing the ati stuff. so i just left it as is.


--
lokeey

[lokeey]

this is actually my 3rd time re-installing Vista, and my second time
without installing any external drivers. i'll have to play around with
it s'more over the weekend. it worked a lot better in XP, tho, before i
decided to make the jump to vista and had no issues overclocking my
system.


--
lokeey