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Brokenwire.NET::Various

ATI Driver on Mobility Radeon
· 2007-05-20 20:32 by Thijs Kroesbergen for Brokenwire.NET

When trying to install the new Ati Catalyst 7.4 driver pack on my laptop I found that I could no longer use this driver!
I could install versions 7.1 and 7.2 for Windows Vista (x86) on my notebook, but since version 7.3 the original Ati driver only supports the desktop video boards.
This is of course a major problem for all notebook owners, because most laptop suppliers (OEM) will never ever update their drivers after the initial release. And the jump to Windows Vista makes it even harder to find OEM-release video drivers for your notebook.

Terry Makedon: AMD Manager for Software Product Management Graphics Product Group issued Driver Heaven with the following statement in April of 2007:

“AMD (formerly ATI) introduced the concept of Catalyst Mobility which is a generic driver that works decently for most laptops. The only way we are able to do this is through permission by a laptop manufacturer (OEM) to include their device in the Catalyst Mobility. We were the first company to provide graphics drivers for laptops to the general public, and we believe there is great value in this. At this point we only have permission from a few vendors and I personally wish more of them would let us. My suggestion is you contact your manufacturer and ask them to have your laptop included in Catalyst Mobility. As for Vista specifically we do not have permissions yet, but as soon as we do we look forward to releasing Vista drivers for laptops.”

But, there seems to be a way to install the orignal Ati Catalyst drivers on your notebook.

First you have to get the DH Mobility Modder.NET

Then you get the original Ati Catalyst driver

Next, you run the Catalyst installer, but cancel it after the files have been unpacked. After this, the files are still in c:\Ati\Support\
After this, you can run the Modtool to modify the driver .INF and MSI files.
Finally, you just run the SETUP.exe from the c:\Ati\Support directory.

Presto:
Windows Vista + Mobility Video + Updated drivers!

Oh, and by the way. With Catalyst version 7.4 you can now run Second Life from within Vista (Finally!) The game even seems smoother than it was before in Windows XP. (But could also be caused by my new hard disk…)

Enjoy!

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