Even in Advanced View the only categories that Catalyst Control Center offers to me are: Presets, Performance, Power, all with very limited subcategories (Add Preset, Manage Presets, CPU Power, Power Profiles, CPU Power). I couldn't find any option to select my card, not even under Presets.

I already tried that yesterday, but I repeated it today after having used CC Cleaner and Driver Sweeper, hoping for a change. On the AMD support driver download page I select Desktop Graphics, Radeon HD series, Radeon HD 6xxx Series, Windows Vista 32 bit and I get this. I download and install Catalyst Software Suite (12-1_vista_win7_32_dd_ccc.exe) which is meant to include the latest drivers, it seems, and I get the Catalyst Control Center with the limited options mentioned above. I reboot the system (although curiously the program didn't tell me to do it) but that changes nothing.

Btw, if I let the AMD site auto-detect my card, it says: "Radeon HD 6xxx Series PCIe" and says the latest driver is 12-1_vista32_win7_32_dd_ccc.exe but if I select download I get a HTTP 404 error (maybe because the name isn't spelled quite correctly? Compare to the one above; I take it they should refer to the same exe). Anyway, I guess that means in some ways the card in the PCIe slot can be recognized for what it is, just not by Vista itself. Right?


I found a category "PCIPnP" with an option "Init Display First". It is already set to "PCIE Slot" though, not "Onboard VGA".

Another BIOS option I found is "Plug & Play O/S" and it is set to "No". No idea if that has anything to do with it. Does it?

Anybody mind me highjacking this thread? No? Thanks! ;-)


I have a ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series, is there any point in upgrading it within reasonable financial limits? Any good recommendations?

Also, is there any way to find out if I have DDR2 or DDR3 ram? (Without pulling it out, preferably). Usually I keep the receits, but I threw this one away after the warrancy was over and it's also no longer "online" (as in order history)

Weeeell ... I certainly wouldn't mind if I wasn't in such a gloomy mood due to my own issues not being resolved yet. ;)


Check the link to CPU-Z that cjrgreen provided in an earlier post. It also has a memory tap and should tell you what RAM you have (mine says DDR2). Or did you mean the RAM of your graphic card?

for 200ish euro you can go 6950 or 560ti below that go with the 6870... however if you have one of the later 48xx chips you might not see much of a speed boost in DX9 games...

Oops, sorry. I just saw the "solved" and thought it was resolved....

Anyway, looks like wodmarach and you already answered my questions. Thanks!

So I'm already backing out ;-)

Right then lets get the basics out of the way first, check the card is fully inserted into the board, second makesure you connect your monitor cable to the card not your MB's graphics port (sounds silly but I know people who have done it by accident), check any power connections to the graphics card (shouldn't be any on that card iirc but it's always a step) load computer making sure the GPU bios shows up on screen (most GPU's flash up a screen before the bios screen), check if the cards working, if not uninstall all drivers and reboot vista should detect an unrecognised card and give you the base VGA driver if you get anything else you missed part of the driver.. reinstall the driver and let us know how it's going.

Okay, I can do all that another time if you think it's worth it. But the monitor is definitely connected to the card, not the MB - like I wrote: If I'd connect it to the main board, the screen would just come up black. But the monitor is connected to the card and I get a picture and can access windows etc. (I'm currently writing from the same computer), doesn't that mean the card is working and fully inserted? Would the monitor get through via the card and the display work all the same if the card was not working or not fully inserted? The card doesn't require extra power supply and the ventilation is working, too. I did already deinstall all NVidia drivers and ran CC Cleaner and Driver Sweeper afterwards, and I just checked the list of installed software and did not find a single entry that seemed related to any graphic cards drivers. I also tried to install the latest driver several times (see above) and I get a success report but it doesn't change anything.

I never got any GPU screen flash up before the BIOS screen though. And the installation guide of the video card says Windows will give me a message about having found new hardware - I never got that either.

ok time to take out the card (after setting bios to use the onboard graphics) and load it up make sure all the drivers are gone etc etc then shutdown and reinsert the card. move the monitor lead over to it and turn it back on you should now get the new hardware detected stuff to happen (by all drivers I do mean the amd stuff aswell and be sure to remove the folder they add to your c: drive

I did as you said and also removed a NVIDIA folder I found still sitting on C:\ (I made a backup copy on a flashdrive, just in case). Strangely enough, when I set the BIOS to use the onboard graphic cards, Vista was automatically searching for drivers and installed one for "Nvidia Geforce 6100 nForce 405" it had apparantly found somewhere, and the graphics went back to their usual 1688x1050 state (my old card is actually a Geforce 7300LE, but since I updated the driver for it some years ago it kept on being displayed as 6100). The weird thing is, the old graphic card wasn't even inserted. So maybe that was part of the problem, that somehow Vista still thinks I'm using some Geforce card.

(Another weird fact is that before I bought this new card, the monitor was always connected to the MB. And when I tried connecting it to the old card the screen just went black. Now I'm not even sure anymore if the computer was actually using my old card or just acting as if (because the drivers said so), while actually just using the onboard card ...?!)

Anyway, I hope I managed to completely purge the system of any Nvidia graphic drivers. At least I'm back to "VGA Standard" now, no "Geforce 6100" is displayed anymore, and there were no more attempts by Vista to reinstall a Geforce driver. (Unfortunately, there seems to have been some collateral damage, as I get "Run DLL" errors now on Windows startup, talkingh about a missing "NvMcTray,dll" and another missing "Nvcpl.dll".)



To make sure I understand - after I reinsert the card and before I start Windows, should I set the BIOS to use the PCIe card again? When exactly should I move the monitor lead over to the new card? Before booting, after I set the BIOS to use the new card or once Windows has been loaded?

You should connect the monitor to the new card, only. Don't connect it to the built-in at any time.

The "6100" is the built-in graphics chip. It should have been disabled in the BIOS when the BIOS determined that you had an add-on graphics card installed. But if you did something like boot with the monitor connected to the built-in, the BIOS may not have done so.

And don't delete files related to graphics drivers by hand. Windows gets confused if you do anything other than use the uninstaller that was provided. Try Driver Cleaner again.

I don't use Driver Cleaner (commercial) but Driver Sweeper (free) but anyway I think the errors started showing up after I used it. Driver Sweeper gave me two "Access Violation" errors related to the registry of these dlls, when I ordered it to clean all Nvidia Display drivers. After that, I got the missing "dll" errors when restarting Windows. And Driver Sweeper still gives me the Access violation errors. So it may not necessarily have anything to do with the removing of the NVIDIA folder (which I did much earlier, I restarted a couple of time afterwards without problems, IIRC). And I only removed the folder manually since there were no more entries for Nvidia drivers in the control panel. Do you think I should still copy the NVIDIA folder back to C:?


The thing is, if I boot with the monitor connected to the graphic card, the screen remains black and I don't see what's going on, since I told the BIOS to use the onboard graphic card. Should I set the BIOS to use the PCIe again, then connect the monitor to the card (screen will probably go black), then reboot the computer?

If you get no signal when you are connected to the card, the card is not seated properly, or the BIOS is set to boot on the built-in graphics. You have to attend to those problems first.

A standalone "NVIDIA" folder is safe to remove. That is just where the drivers are unpacked.

CCleaner should turn up registry references to those DLLs that were deleted. Does it?

If all else fails:

Shut down, and remove the graphics card. In removing it, be sure to release the latch at the rear of the socket. Boot and reinstall the nVidia drivers. Get the system stable.

Uninstall the nVidia drivers. Use only the uninstaller in the Control Panel. Do not use any third-party uninstaller or cleanup tool, and do not delete any files manually.

Shut down, and install the graphics card. Make sure it is well seated. The latch at the rear of the socket must engage, and the tab at the front of the card must go all the way in. If it feels like it didn't, it didn't; try again.

Connect the monitor to the graphics card, and boot.

Yes, I set it to boot on built-in graphics earlier today when wodmarach told me so.

Apparantly it doesn't do that. If I set the BIOS to boot on built-in graphics it ignores the monitor lead in the card. Only when I set it to use the PCIe slot the monitor is working when connected to the card.

Do I need to deinstall the internal Nvidia drivers for the built-in graphics before trying again?

Should, but doesn't always. Some perverse commercial models have the BIOS set to boot on the built-in graphics even if there is an additional card installed.

What's your exact make and model, again? We may be able to find some help with the BIOS if we know that.