Laptop Video Driver Problem

Sam-ssSam-ss
edited September 2006 in Hardware
I hope that folks do not mind but I am reposting the below thread here as I have gotten no response in the Driver area. I am under a time crunch as my American Legion
Post needs the Laptop to drive a software Bingo "Flash Board" as soon as possible.
I am working on a Dell C610 Laptop and that is going to be used to display a Bingo Flash Board with multiple TVs, using the Laptop S-Video out. Problem is that I have not been able to get the TV displays to be clear enough to be useful. The driver for the external monitor will not go above 640 x 480 with 8bit color. I realize that TVs are not very high resolution but it should be better than what it is. Oh, the video chip is ATI Radeon and OS is WIN XP SP2.

Dell Technical Support suggested that I change to ATI Display Drivers with the newer Radeon Catalyst Control Center. They said that they were more configurable and should solve my problem. So I DL two versions: 1) v6.8 and 2) Mobility Radeon v5.13.

Whelp, I followed the installation instructions to the "T"
but both of them failed to complete installation ending
with and error "INF Error" "Video driver not found"
Then it suggested to install "standard vga drivers" and
try again.

Well, this is the first PC that I have ever seen that the standard drivers are not to be found anywhere. They just plan are not there. So I did some googling and could not find any for DL. There were references to this board having Generic VGA Drivers available for DL but I can not find them here either.

I am at a loss. Can anyone help me out?

...>>Sam

Comments

  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2006
    Catalysts don't generally work on Mobility Radeon chips. Try omega drivers, I've succesfully installed them on a Dell Inspiron 600m.
  • Sam-ssSam-ss
    edited September 2006
    One of the things that I was trying, as I had mentioned,
    was the Catalist Mobile Radeon driver set. Since that was for the Mobile Radeon chip, I would think that it should work but as I said, I can not get it to install. However, I will try the
    Omega drivers and see how that goes.

    Thanks much for getting back to me so fast. I appreciate it.

    ...>>Sam
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited September 2006
    Video quality will be sensitive to cables, very sensitive. Both in terms of cable quality and length.
    You should have an option for the second output to be a TV (NTSC).
  • Sam-ssSam-ss
    edited September 2006
    Ok, I tried the latest Omega Drivers and got the same error as I got with the Catalist Drivers. I sure do not know what this is about. I can not understand why there are no standard VGA drivers on this PC. Any ideas on this?
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2006
    Use driver cleaner first - completely uninstall all graphics drivers and then try installing the drivers.
  • Sam-ssSam-ss
    edited September 2006
    Tried the Driver Cleaner and then tried to install the
    catalist radion drivers. Same error. It still says it
    wants standard VGA drivers to be installed before
    the installation will proceed.

    What I am now wondering is if the WIN XP SP2 OS
    that is on this laptop is a Dell properity version that
    may have had all other video drivers removed. I did
    not install the OS but the Laptop came with only a
    Dell restore disk. It was donated to our Legion by
    a major corperation and is not new but they reloaded
    the OS before sending it to us.

    Another thought I had was I wonder if there is a way
    to get a better s-video signal by using either a svga
    to s-video converter or maybe a USB to S-video
    converter, if there is one made. Any thoughts on
    this?

    ...>>Sam
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited September 2006
    Try dropping the attached file (unzip it first) into C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers. If it tells you that the file already exists, rename the old one to vga.old before you do it. You might want to compare the file versions and file sizes if that's the case, it may be helpful in troubleshooting the problem.

    Reboot and see if you get lucky. :)
    vga.zip 10.7K
  • Sam-ssSam-ss
    edited September 2006
    Well now this was interensting. Every time I would rename
    VGA.SYS to VGA.OLD the system created a new copy of VGA.SYS. I finally just overwrote it as you suggested and
    that held. However, bad news is that it made no difference.
    Still get the error when trying to install the ATI Radicon
    Mobility Catalist or the Omega files.

    One thing that I have noticed is when I bypass all of the
    install searches and go to pick my driver, all that is listed
    there is about a dozen ATI drivers, none of which I know
    what is. There is no standard VGA driver there. Also,
    there is no switch to display all drivers that I would expect.
    I am still thinking that this OS is modified for this specific
    unit by Dell.

    ...>>Sam
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited September 2006
    Are you unticking the box marked "show compatible hardware"? Windows idea of what is "compatible" is pretty stringent.

    Can you give us a screenshot or list of the "dozen ATI drivers"?
  • Sam-ssSam-ss
    edited September 2006
    Morning Prof,

    Ok, as I indicated before, there are no check boxes to show
    all drivers compatable drivers. It just is not there. As for the drivers that are listed, I will type them in here as I could not get the screen capture to work through my network where my
    eMail is. All of the drivers listed begain with "AIT Technologies, Inc." so no need to type that in. Also, no need to type the dozen or so that are for 64bit processors. So here is what I have:

    3D RAGE II PCI,
    3D RAGE II+ PCI,
    3D RAGE IIC AGP,
    3D RAGE IIC PCI,
    3D RAGE PCI,
    ATI-26HV2PCI,
    ATI-26HV3PCI,
    ATI-26HV4PCI,
    March 32 AX PCI,

    The rest are for 64bit systems.

    No Standard VGA drivers and no check block to turn them on.

    Still getting the missing VGA driver message when I try to install the Catalist drivers.

    Today, I am going to try using the VGA monitor connection with a VGA to S-VIDO converter to see what happens with that rather than hook S-Video directly to the Laptop.

    Once again, thanks much for trying to help be get this under control. I appreciate it.

    ....>>Sam
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited September 2006
    When you are trying to install the driver, are you going into Device Manager and trying to update the driver for the current Display Adapter? Have you tried going into Control Panel and using the Add New Hardware wizard?

    If you have only recently received the laptop as a donation, perhaps it might be simpler in the long run to run the Dell Recovery disc and see if a fresh start makes a difference. Backup any data you care about first. :)
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited September 2006
    You need the manufactuers drivers for the older ATI mobility products. (Dell)
  • Sam-ssSam-ss
    edited September 2006
    Yippie-ki-yah.....!!! I may, and I repeat, may have it fixed.

    I just stumbled across a possible solution. In still trying
    everything I could think of, I decided to hook a monitor
    up to the VGA port and see how it looked. I found that
    with the monitor hooked up, the ATI drivers allowed me
    to configure it properly (the way that I wanted it to be).

    Then when I removed the monitor and hooked the TV
    back up with s-vga, the settings held. If they will continue
    to hold, I think that the problem may be solved. It is
    running at 1024 x 768 and 85 scan lines. On my HDTV
    the picture is almost as good as the laptop screen.

    I will take it to the Legion tomorrow and try it with all
    of the TVs hooked up.

    Thanks very much for your help. I will keep ya posted
    as to the final outcome.

    ...>>Sam
Sign In or Register to comment.