atikmdag.sys, Windows 7 x64, ATI Radeon 4850, Crossfire

Anonymous

I am on my 3rd install of Windows 7. Having a really bad time with the video drivers. And from what I have read, others are too. I shut it off for now and will leave it off till better drivers are released. The funny this is, is that the drivers from windows update are just as bad as the drivers from ATI. If you install the video drivers from windows update you are looking at BSOD. You can reboot into safe mode and remove everything ATI however if you continue to try to boot normally you will ruin the OS and you will have to reinstall. Specifically it is atikmdag.sys. This was also an issue with Vista from what I have seen researching this issue. The supposed work around is to just install the driver but even if you download just the driver it wants to install the Catalyst Control Center which atikmdag.sys is a part of. So you are stuck between wanting to install the drivers for your video card or using the generic video driver that is stable and won't crash your system. The annoying thing is is that with the generic driver the video on the monitor is scaled. So you have a black border all the way around the screen. The maximum resolution of my monitor is 1920x1080. The best I can get with the generic driver is 1440x1080.

I would say that it was a hardware conflict somewhere however this is hardware that worked just fine in Windows XP.

Is there a fix for this yet or is it more of a "be patient" thing?

My system is as follows,

Asus P5K-E Motherboard

4 gigs of DDR2 1066 RAM

3 10,000 drives RAID 0

ATI Radeon 4850 cards in Crossfire. Monitor hooked up via HDMI.

Not that any of that matters since it seems everyone across many different configurations is having the very same issue as I am.

Essentially, its a very expensive case full of hardware that is unusable. I know that I am going to asked for information that I haven't included in this post but I am at work at the moment and can't provide it.

Thanks

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Anonymous

Alright everybody.. Same situation for me. Two HD 4850's in crossfire mode.. I updated some drivers and started to get the BSOD with the atikmdag.sys error. I actually came up with a fix for this 4 hours later that doesn't require you to reformat your computer. In my case, here is exactly what I did:

Start computer in safe mode with networking
Download and install Driver Sweeper which can be obtained here
Start the Driver Sweeper program, check the ATI - Display box and click on the Clean button. This will delete ALL ATI drivers from your system.
Reboot computer again, it should start normally now if everything worked right... Now you're gonna remove any CCC program via add/remove programs.
Now all you have to do is find the original driver you had before you tried to upgrade. I would recommend using the disk that came with your video card. You can also go to the ATI website and search for your exact model and download the drivers... Keep in mind, I would stay away from the newest versions of drivers as they all seem pretty buggy...

The current CCC software I am running stable is: Catalyst™ Control Center Version 2010.0406.2133.36843

The current driver I have installed for my HD 4850's in crossfire mode is atikmpag.sys (8.14.1.6113)

This driver with that version of CCC hasn't failed me yet. Try not updating graphics drivers if you don't have to. If it isn't broke, don't fix it.

I really hope this helps everybody out... I got mine working again... Oh and for all of you with the black borders issue the post above mine is 100% accurate and will fix the issue.

Also this is the system I am currently running:

SPECS:

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor

ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard

Crucial Ballistix Tracer 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory

XFX HD-485X-ZNFC Radeon HD 4850 1GB 256-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 x2 in crossfire hooked up via HDMI cable

ASUS VE246H Black 24" 2ms(GTG) HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

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Anonymous

I had the black border as well but its actually an easy fix and hopefully it'll work for you. Go to your CCC Panel, then go to Graphics, then to Desktops and Displays, then in the bottom left corner, you will see your monitor or monitors. When your mouse is over the icon an arrow pointing downward will appear that will represent a drop down menu. Click that arrow then click Configure. You should see more then several tabs on this screen. Click the tab called Scaling Options, then slide the bar to Overscan (0%) and click apply then ok. You should be good to go. :)

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41 additional answers

Anonymous

2010-01-28T15:22:43+00:00

The only fix I've managed thus far on my computer (Gateway FX6800 upgraded to two Visiontek 4850 and Windows 7 Pro 64bit) is to use the Windows default install drivers for the cards (I believe these are driver version 8.14). If I then manually upgrade the drivers beyond 8.14 either via download from ATI (installed by both ATI install manager and driver upgrade in safe mode) or through the default windows updates I get the BSOD at boot. I have noticed that the BSOD seems to happen when Crossfire is enabled at boot (I'm assuming at the same time atikmdag.sys is loaded). Version of CCC does not seem to affect my system, nor does uninstalling CCC all together. I have read elsewhere that disabling the HD Sound via the HDMI off of the cards can sometimes fix the problem, but in my case disabling the responsible sound driver also disables the card.

This seems to be an issue that both Microsoft and ATI need to work on. If only they would pull there heads out of there asses and do so... God knows people have been complaining about this issue since Vista 64 and the 4XXX series of cards came out. If only a few people were complaining then I would understand how nothing has been done, but many, many people have been complaining (a simple Google search for atikmdag.sys will show this).
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Anonymous

2009-12-17T21:33:06+00:00

I gave up on ATI years ago should have stayed that way but the card's size was just right for micro board setup.

Anyway as far as the driver problem goes I can confirm it crashed my W7 x64, however if you only install the display driver (available separately on the site) it will initialize and not crash, if you are tempted to go for the Catalyst Control Center it will crash again so don't be tempted.

The 50hz trick to eliminate the black border will not work on my 4670ZL (Zalman cooler) with my ASUS 242H on hdmi my Acer 22" on DVI is okay.

I just checked it again and system is stable as long as the control center is not installed
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Anonymous

2009-12-03T01:51:53+00:00

I have had exactly the same problem with BSOD (ATI Radeon 4670 video card, Win 7 Pro 64 bit just new install )and just plain black, blue, tan and green sceens to as well, usually when I played a video or tested 3D. Windows error report on blue screen lists atikmdag.sys.

I tried everything. Finally I uninstalled all 6 Windows updates (I think it is KB974332, KB974431 or KB976098 that is causing the issue but I removed all of them). I installed just the ATI video driver (not the full version-it does install a Catalyst manager but this is OK). Make sure you turn off Windows updates and if they show up again like they did with me right click on them and say Hide.

Anyways it has been perfect so far for a few hours whereas it was crashing repeatedly before. I had it working like this yesterday and even though I thought I had the Windows Updates turned off it reinstalled these last three when I shut down and on the next restart it crashed at boot which was new. I even tried the black screen quick fix which caused it to crash 12 times in about 30 minutes. Did a system restore and did the above and everything has been perfect. So it is a driver crash caused by these Windows updates.
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