[Nick_R]

Hi all
I have a Sony Vaio laptop PCG-K215M 2004 model running Windows XP Home edition SP 3
Zone Alarm firewall, AVG Free antivirus and Webroot Spysweeper
Out of the blue this morning on start up, the screen display had shrunk to 800 x 600 at 16 bit
Error message on startup "ATI Control Panel failed to initialize because no ATI driver is installed, or ATI driver is not working"
Wondered if recent iTunes and Quicktime updates had anything to do with this?
Researched on various boards for fixes and have tried the following so far: -
Downloaded original ATI Radeon driver from VAIO Support for my machine to reinstall
However, unable to uninstall existing ATI Display Driver from Add/Remove programs and get the following error message: -
ATI Uninstall - Error Initializing
Tried running previous version of ATI Setup from C:\Drivers\video_driver but get the following error message: -
"Set up was unable to complete the installation. Try to setup your display adapter with a standard VGA driver before running setup"
Tried running ATI Setup from download version from Vaio support and get the same message.
Now a bit stuck....
Have increased resolution to 1024 x 768 but this is still not full screen.
All help gratefully received.

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Go to Start>run... type in devmgmt.msc , click OK
In the Device Manger window, click on the plus sign of Display adapters
Right click on the ATI list item, and select Uninstall (there may be two ATI entries... uninstall them both)
Restart your computer
Windows will start up using the generic display driver and if you get a new hardware detected message, just cancel/close the window
Try to reinstall the ATI driver again

Installing display drivers should be a simple task. Hopefully, there is nothing that runs deeper with your problem.

[makai]

Go to Start>run... type in devmgmt.msc , click OK
In the Device Manger window, click on the plus sign of Display adapters
Right click on the ATI list item, and select Uninstall (there may be two ATI entries... uninstall them both)
Restart your computer
Windows will start up using the generic display driver and if you get a new hardware detected message, just cancel/close the window
Try to reinstall the ATI driver again

Installing display drivers should be a simple task. Hopefully, there is nothing that runs deeper with your problem.

[Nick_R]

Hi Makai

Thanks for taking the trouble to post a reply.

I have just solved the problem a different route by double clicking the device in "Display Adapters" that was in error state (it had an exclammation mark icon)
I got to this from the Device Manager screen
As the device was in error state, no driver details were found and no name was given but I used the Update Driver button in the Driver tab and then specified C:\Drivers\video_driver\Driver\XP_INF as the location to look for the drivers to re-copy
These were the original files in the original installation location, not the ones I downloaded today from Sony Vaio Support (which actually didn't work!)
This seemed to work as the files were re-copied and "RADEON IGP 345M" was reinstated as the description under "Display Adapters" in the Device Manager Screen
Everything now back to normal
I must say, I am bemused - not quite sure why doing it this way worked when intiatiating ATI Setup from C:\Drivers\video_driver didn't.
Reading through other posts on other forums today, I see quite a few other people have had problems not being able to uninstall the ATI Display Driver using Add/Remove Programs in XP.
In the event I was able to update from the original location and work round the problem without needing to uninstall the old driver and install a new one, so am happy.
Thanks again for your time. I hope this post may help others.

[makai]

ATI drivers and Windows can be buggy at times... especially if Windows thinks your drivers are already there... even if they're not! Yes, I always used the original drivers myself, as I always find updated drivers to harbor too much other junk. In any case very cool your laptop's working again!