Regarding BIOS upgrade.

[Tralfaz]

Re: Regarding BIOS upgrade.

EDOT, there is nothing wrong with flashing your BIOS, as long as, you don't brick your motherboard. Manufacturers have come a long way, in making BIOS flashes as painless, as possible. ASRock's Instant Flash being one of the best.

Does the new BIOS work well with everything, except Acheage? If not, as Parsec said, revert to an older BIOS.

As for driver updates, both ATI and NVIDIA are notorious for releasing buggy updates. I've learned, not to update until those bugs are ironed out.

When you do update your ATI drivers some things to remember; Download the new drivers first. Make sure there are no programs running, in the background, including firewall and antivirus (msconfig is a good way to turn everything off, via the Startup Tab). Uninstall all the old ATI drivers. Check for anything left over and manually remove (there are usually a few ATI folders left over). Then, and only then, install all the new drivers. If you need more details, just ask.

[EDOT]

Re: Regarding BIOS upgrade.

EDOT, there is nothing wrong with flashing your BIOS, as long as, you don't brick your motherboard. Manufacturers have come a long way, in making BIOS flashes as painless, as possible. ASRock's Instant Flash being one of the best.

Does the new BIOS work well with everything, except Acheage? If not, as Parsec said, revert to an older BIOS.

As for driver updates, both ATI and NVIDIA are notorious for releasing buggy updates. I've learned, not to update until those bugs are ironed out.

When you do update your ATI drivers some things to remember; Download the new drivers first. Make sure there are no programs running, in the background, including firewall and antivirus (msconfig is a good way to turn everything off, via the Startup Tab). Uninstall all the old ATI drivers. Check for anything left over and manually remove (there are usually a few ATI folders left over). Then, and only then, install all the new drivers. If you need more details, just ask.

i have an AMD Radeon hd 7700 Series.

and i just checked, and it tells me it's up too date.

i browsed the AMD website and can't find a download link for the older revision, should i be looking somewhere else?

[Tralfaz]

Re: Regarding BIOS upgrade.

Hi Edot, the HD 7700 has been "put out to pasture" so to speak. It isn't actively supported anymore and uses legacy drivers (drivers which have been optimized to their maximum potential). I'd say the original driver installation was corrupt. Uninstall the drivers and reinstall them. The best way is to follow the instructions on the AMD site.

How-To Uninstall AMD Catalyst Drivers From A Windows Based System
How-To Install AMD Catalyst


Pay special attention to step 1 of Install AMD Catalyst. Make sure there are no programs running, firewall and antivirus included (this may have been how the problem started). Msconfig is a good way to make sure everything is off. Simply, run msconfig, go to the Startup tab (remember what is checked to make it easier when you finish the installation to recheck everything) "disable all", apply and exit. You'll be prompted to restart your machine. When it restarts check the "Don't show this message again" box. You can open Task Manager to make sure nothing is running then move on to step 2 and complete the Catalyst installation. Reboot to finalize the installation then run msconfig again. This time, undoing what you did the first time, check mark the programs you want to run at startup, apply, exit and reboot again. This should fix the original problem with atikmdag.sys module. As always, best of luck.