Ati2dvag problem update
I decided to republish a very long but detailed comment from an Ati user, Casondra, on May 5, 2009, regarding the Ati2dvag problem that I used to face – which resulted in me trashing my previous computer completely.
I wrote to Casondra much earlier asking her if she would mind me republishing her comment in a separate post because the old post was getting a little lengthy in comments, and she agreed it was a good idea too.
“I figure the more information there is out there about this, the fewer people who will go insane looking for answers,” – Casondra
So here it is:
My husband just got a custom built system, all parts fully compatible (verified through several sources), but the video card seems to have issues. When running a streaming video fullscreen, or a video editing software (with inline preview), the system hangs for a bit, then you get an error: “VPU Recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands.”
So, I updated the drivers (not only for the card, but for the display as well). No change.
So, I lowered pretty much all of the settings in the Catalyst Control Center, and verified overclocking was turned off. Nothing.
I swapped the VGA to DVI (I knew this wasn’t the issue, but for the sake of things thought I would mention it).
I found that having a VIA chipset with an ATI card has issues with the AGP being default, so I switched it to PCI to PCI bridge. Still nothing. Except, this time when I tested a streaming video, I a blue screen saying that the file ‘ati2dvag’ caused a serious issue with windows, and windows had shut down. That my graphics drivers had been caught in an infinite loop, and the file ‘ati2dvag’ was to blame. What is that file even for? I have never heard of it until now. Am I only getting this blue screen now because I swapped the vga to dvi?
All this just makes me wonder if these ‘fixes’ just made things worse.
- ASROCK 4COREDUAL-SATA2 motherboard
- Powercolor ATI Radeon HD4350 video card
- Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 cpu
- Crucial Rendition 2GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800 ram (1 stick)
- Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB SATA2 7200RPM 8.9MS 8MB hdd (storage drive)
- RetailPlus+ 465W Dual Fan psu
The main hdd is a Maxtor IDE drive, 120mb. Not sure of other specs on it, had the computer apart so much lately I don’t feel like opening it again to check.
It’s running Windows XP Home, though if I recall the disks we have are SP2, and it refuses to go to SP3 on his computer, though I switched over fine. Is it possible the solution, for us, is as simple as getting SP3 on his computer? Mine doesn’t have an external graphics card, so I can’t test that theory.
I did see most posts about these issues involve cards with fans, but this card doesn’t have one, and never seems to overheat. (You can touch it briefly and not get burned). So I can’t very well clean a fan I don’t have, not to mention as it is a new card (out of the box about a week), even if it had a fan, it couldn’t be dirty so fast.
I also notice some people have problems with not having a good enough psu to cover their demands. But surely 465W is enough?
I would yank the card altogether, but his motherboard doesn’t have built in video adapters, so it would make the computer useless.
Even though we only paid like 45 bucks for the card, I am not fond of having to RMA it, if it is even eligible (since the ATI/AMD site says system hangs and such aren’t covered by their warranty. I am hoping the retailer thinks otherwise on that). But it seems the only option left is to RMA and get an NVidia card. Or am I wrong?
Oh, the system also has in it a WinFast TV Tuner card, a soundblaster live! 5.1 audio card (which was hell trying to find drivers for, since the website says the card isn’t even there, til I realized I could manual force them from the list instead of searching), and a telephone/modem card (He says ‘Just in case’, though I doubt he will ever use it since we are on cable internet). I don’t think these cards are causing issues, but I guess you never know.
The one noticeable thing about this problem (in my experience) was that it seemed to go away for a while, only to reappear (again) after several months. Temperature spikes, slowdowns, and BSODs. And trust me, I tried just about everything that everyone has spoken about in the comments.
If you have any of your experiences, posting a new comment on this new page could be helpful to someone out there. Good luck.
I just ran into this problem for the first time today. My laptops a little on the older side, Im running Windows XP Pro (sp3) on a 1.7ghz pentium(r) with 512mb. I was playing runescape, a very simple and low end flash game. I closed my laptop (with the game still open) When i opened my laptop the game menu was there but everything was distorted, sat for a few seconds, then got the same BSOD described above. I find it weird ive never had this problem until now. I know there is still no solution for this problem, just though i would share my problems too. I will be keeping an eye on this though in hope someone finds an answer.
I am having this issue as well… I play EQ2, and WoW, and watch streaming video on my computer… World of warcraft, i’ve never had an issue. EQ2 freezes for about 10 seconds intermittently, and I’ve been seeing the BSOD saying something along the lines of Ati2dvag has an issue and must shut down. We have wiped the entire system, reinstalled, and are still getting the same issue, and as you have said it is intermittent.
I’m having the same issue as well. It happens maybe 5 times per hour when im playing Battlefield 2. It also happened after a patch on Lotro ( the lord of the rings online), but i just changed “engine speed” from high to medium in the game, and after that it works fine.
when i get the message“VPU Recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands.” i ussualy can keep playing the games. but i tried to turn on VPU recover once and then i got bluescreen instead D;
Sorry for my bad English!
I’ve had this problem for the last couple of months. I’ve had an ati radeon pci express 500mb card for about 3 years ran it on a previous custombuilt pc using W4K with no probs. Upgraded to XP about a year ago. I have a 600wt psu and fans everywhere. one side of the box is usually open so overheating isn’t a problem and I have a small antistatic hoover to get rid of dust.
I have tried the following;
Register cleaner, no good
latest drivers , no joy
Removing graphics software and reinstall from scratch, lasted about a week before blue screening.
Editted ati2dvag file in registry ( rename and force new file) and reinstall not bluescreened for 5 days now
If this doesn’t work then it’s a Nvidia card for me. Do I get my money back from ATI and what have they said about it? I haven’t seen any official comments from them
I had this problem happen to me yesterday. I was playing spider solitaire and using itunes when all of a sudden I got that blue screen. I didn’t notice the normal overheating because it was the hottest day on record ever in Seattle, Washington at 104 degrees, so that might be the reason for the crash. But it’s only 80 degrees out right now, and I still get the crash, I’m having to type this on safe mode. I removed the ati driver but it still crashes so that didn’t work. I noticed also, that after the crash, my norton protection turned off and it suggested this file to fix that: KB20080828105226EN.exe I don’t know if anyone else had that happen to them, but it would be nice if anyone knows about norton turning off
I have this happen to me too. I get the distorted screen with the lowest resolution and an error that my ati2dvga has an issue and must shut down. Please help by sending error report to Microsoft. This happens when I play Anarcy Online a graphics game. I have searched everywhere for a fix and have not found anything. I use a Compaq Persario 3200 80G HD 1G Ram..it runs Second Life fine..but not Anarchy Online. I fear it will conk out permanetly.
my problem with ati2dvag was a bit different, although some of the symptoms were/are the same. what i was getting was HDD access. a lot of it. usually, if i was just working on the laptop (a Lenovo T500, brand spanking new, running XP Pro, SP3, 3GB RAM), i wouldn’t notice much. some hanging on when clicking the drop-down when saving files. BUT when i was playing a movie, it was all start-stop-start….stop….start. And i would just watch my HDD access LED light up.
Anyway, what i found was that it is used for listening for hot-keys to be pressed. “what does that have to do with HDD access?” i thought. anyway, I went into the ATI Catalyst Control Center and disabled hot-keys. Problem solved, ati2dvag is no longer seen in Task Manager.
But alas, today, two weeks or so after applying that change, i got the BSOD, and found this site.
my screen had locked up, and when the BSOD appeared, it revealed the infinite loop problem. just rebooted, found this site. so far so good, I’ll see if it occurs again.
so if anyone is having this problem, and hasn’t tried it yet, I suggest the hot-key configuration. It’s easy to find, and is just unchecking a box.
John
hmmm… interesting.. I’ve recently reinstalled a dell 380 precision and replaced the nvidia card with an ati 4350. I did everything to the letter but after restarting the system it just came up with blank screen(s) on all ports. I downloaded the latest drivers off ati (new ones were put on this week) but then it said (in safe mode, and rather unhelpfully) ‘you must install directx 8′ – odd, because it had driectx 9c on it already).
because it was a fresh install, I reinstalled the whole operating system. I was wasting that much time trying to figure out of old nvidia drivers were causing an issue. no go. So I reinstalled the nvidia card, fiddled around a bit, then reinstalled the 4350 card again. This time it came up with a blue screen (immediately after initial boot) that refers to this ati2dvag.dll file, along with error codes 0×0..8e, 0xc..5, 0xbd04e59e, 0xb8166b1c, 0×0.. and it says something about stopping at address bd04e59e base at bd012000. I put those in incase this is meaningful to anyone over the whole issue. dell’s pretty good at system integration, which is why I tend to buy them and they have ati options for this computer aswell, I think. So maybe the 5 hrs of fiddling today might’ve revealed some fault codes worth noting…or maybe not!.. oh well, I’d better buy some other brand, then…
Not sure if it’s important, but in my case the problem first started to appear when I switched from my old CRT monitor to a HD LCD one.
Just encountered this hangup on my Dell desktop running XP SP2. This particular machine has had numerous problems with overheating & shutting off, which I have attributed to bad design and engineering. I’ve replaced fans, cleaned fans, etc., and still have problems with it running hot and often loud before shutting down. Now I’m wondering if any other victims of this Ati2dvag bug had chronic problems prior to the ATI problem that might provide insight to symptoms.
Thanks.
I did a barebones upgrade a few years ago. That’s when my problems started. I have done nothing but fight with this ATI PCI-E card since it’s inception. I have dumped and re-installed drivers. I have spent countless hours scouring the net looking for a fix. Nothing I have tried has even helped, muchless “fixed” it. I am going out today and buy an InVidia and call it good. I have atleast had good luck with those.
If you have problem with that ati2dvag just try to underclock your card as much as you can if necessary…..it fixed my ati. If that wont fixe your issue use google or try that thing with updating video drivers.
Keep smiling
I have a brand new Lenovo Thinkpad W500 and I get the ati2dvag error constantly. the most recent one (5 min ago) happened while I only had firefox open with a google maps page. Nothing else running. I don’t even have any software installed yet. I can’t believe anyone could sell me a computer with this kind of a issue.
Same as Jason S: Blue screen about once a day on a new Lenovo T400 with ATI mobility radeon HD 3470. It seems to happen often when zooming and shifting in Google Maps (Firefox) or when playing a 3D game (the free version Nadeo Trackmania Nations Forever).
I am in the exact same situation as Frank. I have a new Lenovo T400 with same graphics card. All went well for two months now – playing games, doing everyday stuff – but now when I even start Uplink (the most low-end game I own), it freezes, gives me a BSOD and chrashes. It says my ‘ati2dvag.dll file has run in an infinite loop and had to shut down to pervent errors’. I have tried everything from deleting drivers and reinstalling new ones for graphics card, BIOS, and some other stuff I thought would help. To no avail
. I am going to write a serious e-mail to ati about this, because this ‘little’ problem has cost me around 1.500 euros. If anyone finaly find a solution, please post it here, i’m watching this site for more updates.
Asrock has a new bios which fixes problems regarding the 4350.
Did work for me
I have been looping about every 2 minutes now, it seems to get worse with time. The computer is a friends and I think she bought it a couple of years ago, run XP with SP2. Found one site that claims going PCI to PCI will fix problem, but then I look at this site and that is not true here. Why won’t ATI publish or take responsibility for this obvious problem of there that they passed on to us?
Hi!
For all the desktop users, try the following:
1. Reseat the graphics card (temp variations, heavy cards and bumping into the casing … tend to undo the tiny lock … even slighlty)
2. When you are doing so, rub the contacts with an eraser or iso-propyl alcohol (mediacl swabs can be used)
3. Use DriverSweeper (guru3D) to uninstall all instances of graphics drivers
4. Use the show hidden devices feature by going to Advanced Settings from My Computer/Computer Properties->Environment Variables and add a new one->DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES with the value of 1. Then, goto device manager, select show hidden devices from the view menu and finally uninstall all previous instances of pci bridge and graphic card drivers
5. Verify that your motherboard is ‘compatible’ with the built-in audio device/or missing audio device on ATI cards (high idle cpu usage). If not, disable the High Definition Audio Device in device manager (do not uninstall, just disable)
Hi Ahmed,
Interesting tips.
Thank you all for your possible solutions to this “infinite loop” problem that I have had from time to time for over 18 months on what was a new Acer Travelmate 7720G with a an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2400 XT. My technical computer skills are not adequate to try any of the various solutions… even the advice on updating the driver sounds problematic to me .. I cannot afford to lose the use of my laptop! Does anyone have the customer service email for ATI and we can start bombarding them with complaints and demands for a solution.
Just a thought.. would upgrading to Windows 7 help?
@ Gary,
I have heard a few cases – that this problem is still happening with Windows 7. But I’m not sure if it is true.
Just to increase the thread in case anyone at Microsoft or ATI are listening (some hope!!).
I have had a Thinkpad T30 for about 2 years now and it has run flawlessly until for some stupid reason I decided to upgrade all of the drivers before IBM removed them from their site (as Dell did for my wife’s old Inspiron).
Sure enough, after upgrading the ATI drivers to those listed on the IBM web site I get the ati2dvag.dll infinite loop about 80% of the time I boot the laptop.
I have tried all of the recommended fixes to no avail, tried using about 50 different versions of older ATI drivers, none of which addresses the problem as none are the custom type of driver needed for the Radeon Mobility 7500.
Of course, I could just backrev to the last working driver version on IBM’s web site….but oh no, in their infinite wisdom they remove all but the current version. Do IBM want to know about this, do they hell, if the laptop is not current they are not interested.
Way to go Microsoft, IBM and ATI, none of the big vendors these days gives a damn about thier customer base.
@ Tonks
I think if you made backups, you can likely still restore the old drivers and maybe this would remove your ati2dvag problem.
Well then it is time to make a web-site dealing with this problem.
Let’s gather and mass sue ATI. I believe we all have seen many examples of web-sites (even for mobile phones) that broughht awareness of the problem and made the companies responsible to face their mistakes.
As you may understand I have the same problem with a brand new ATI 4650 with this ati2dvag “Display Driver stopped responding” problem.
I am a webmaster and I would be happy to contribute in the effort.
I have ASUS RADEON EAX850 and having the same problems wth the ATI2DVAF-Infinity Loop Message, but only when I first boot up with new 4 x 1gb RAM. When the boot-up is successfulmm, the CPU runs HOT 75C even though the system is not overclocked! I noticed that the display card ran super hot as I happend to toch it while accessing RAM modules.
In my case I have no problems with 2 x 1 GB ram at boot up
but see that message with 4 x 1 GB ram; so I don’t know if it had to do with the BIOS setting or more ram casuing higher temperature or some type of BUG:( I still getting a 75C CPU warning ven though I’m running 2 sticks of RAM withouth overclocking. I haven’t tried re-installing the driveres yet and I’ll try that recommendation next.
I have a 5 yr old Vaio VGN S260. I had these problems and had them “fixed” when it was still under warranty but it only worked for a couple of weeks, a month at most, until it would mess up again. Every single time that I turn my computer on, it does this within a matter of minutes. Any suggestions, besides the obvious buy a new one?
I just rebuilt my desktop computer. It had been getting a little dated, so to make it last a little bit longer I decided to add two liquid cooling circuits into the system. Several months later, I finally got around to getting it back together, and now, what do I find I have to fix? The Ati2dvag bug. I have come across this bug before, and fixed it at least for myself.
In the past, it seems that with my experience, it is a conflict having to do with the device drivers for ATI graphics cards and Windows XP. The best way to get around it, for me, was to install Win XP, and before anything else, install ATI drivers. Everything else can come second. Something with the ATI code doesnt like it when it is installed on an XP system which is not pristine and virgin. That having been said, I find myself now that I dont want to install WinXP again now, even though I have set my system up so that the hard drive with XP is nearly empty of programs other than the operating system (and therefore makes reinstalling XP easier).
I had the idea that perhaps the ati2dvag file was something temporary or a type of dump file. So after about 20 bouts of blue screen madness, I deleted the file on a whim. Let me tell you, it is a fairly important file. It apparently has some say in fixing a display’s pixels, color bits, and is a major component of the display driver on a whole. By deleting the file, my color depth is down to 4-bits, and my pixel resolution shows up as 1×1, lol. I can attest to the fact that it seems to be influenced by high temperatures on the boards, but then again, it doesnt go away when the temperatures go down. I think it may be….. hahaha, just got it again. As I was saying, I think it is an error that is simply in a significant place in the code, which is easily exacerbated by high temperatures.
People might laugh, but high temps do cause problems for computer circuitry. As it stands now, my CPU is at 80.5 degrees Farenheit, my motherboard temp is at 123.5 degrees, my northbridge temp is at 118 degrees, and my southbridge temp is at 120 degrees. I can only get to windows desktop when I enter safemode, which makes the display drivers turn off. I don’t know what else to say except that I will comment once I have re-installed WinXP, because im getting to the end of my tether with this. Oh, and by the by, im a political science student… a facebook group or a petition on such a problem might be a novel way of dealing with this bug. Get some real attention on it.
Thanks Lugh, some good suggestions there.
Hi All,
I just got a HP Z800 workstation with XP 64bit that I use for work with no fancy graphic requirements. It has a ATI FIREPRO V5700 512MB PCIe graphic card. I have been having troubles recently. The computer started by crashing with this message:
“The ati2dvag display driver has stopped working normally. Save your work and reboot the system to restore full display functionality. The next time you reboot the machine a dialog will be displayed giving you a chance to report this failure to Microsoft.”
Sometimes you can’t even reboot it and you will have to mannually turn the power off and on to get any response from it.
I have removed all the ATI related programs and re-installed them. But the problem occured again. I have now removed them all together and just using the Standard VGA Graphics Adapter. So far I haven’t had the crashing problem any more. The only problem with using the Standard VGA Graphics Adapter
is that when moving a window across there is a waviness effect. I am not a computer expert so I am wondering if anyone has any simple suggestion to get rid of the waviness effect. Thanks, Zahra
I have been trouble with my workstation (HP Z800 with ATI FIREPRO V5700 512MB PCIe graphic card). I use it for work with no fancy graphic requirements. Recently the computer has been crashing with this error message:
“The ati2dvag display driver has stopped working normally. Save your work and reboot the system to restore full display functionality. The next time you reboot the machine a dialog will be displayed giving you a chance to report this failure to Microsoft.”
Sometimes rebooting after the carsh fails and you will have to manually turn it off and on to get any response from it.
I have removed all things ATI and reinstalled them but it didn’t solve the problem. I have un-installed everything and am currently using the Standard VGA Graphics Adapter. The screen looks a bit funny but so far have not have any crashes yet since I un-install the ATI driver. The other issue with this driver is that there is a waviness effect when you try to move an open window. Is there a simple solution to get rid of the waviness effect? Thanks. Zahra
I just ran into the Ati2dvag problem yesterday and have been online since then trying to find a solution.
I have a custom machine built for me by my brother which has lasted longer than any commercial machine that I have owned. It was starting to slow down and experience some problems so I just wiped the hd clean and reinstalled everything. I downloaded an ATI driver for the video card (Radeon 9800 series)and everything seemed ok except that I couldn’t get my favorite game to function quite the way it was before.
I had a couple of additional installs to do but both said I needed SP2 to install so I downloaded SP2. The next time I tried to open an email with a Media Player attachment, I got the blue screen and the “ati2dvag” infinite loop message and here I am.
Rather than get caught in another loop, i.e. trying to find fixes, does it work to just purchase and install a video card from a different manufacturer? I’ve read a couple of letters from people who stated they did this but they don’t say whether or not it works. Given ATI’s apparent refusal to deal with this problem, I’m done with them.
Steve
Hello everyone. My Atidvag issue is similar but only happens when I play a graphic intensive game. At completely random times while playing Warhammer Online the game will lock up and the screen goes black. I can still hear the in game sound lopping. At this point my options are to wait 5 minutes for the “The ati2dvag display driver has stopped working normally. Save your work and reboot the system to restore full display functionality. The next time you reboot the machine a dialog will be displayed giving you a chance to report this failure to Microsoft” error or just cold boot. I never get the error while at the desktop or playing any type of media. I have a Sapphire ATI3850HD AGP card. My previous card was a Nvidia geforce 6800 and it worked great. I’ve also tried the ATIx1600 with same problem. Never buying another ATI product again.
One thing I’ve noticed that may be a coincidence but seems to help. I dl’d Rivatuner and pushed the gpu to 750Mhz. I thought the constant switching from 500 to 750 that the card does normally might be causing the error. It still crashes but it seems to be less frequent now.
I estimate I’ve spent about 30 hours trying to figure this out.
@ Shawn
Hope it works out for you, and it doesn’t get worse.
I have a proble with the atisdvag and I cant help it!!! I formatted my pc and one day after BOOM!!!! It crashed again!!! And this is happening always, and mostly when i try to watch videos!!! What can I do???
PROBLEM CARD: HIS ATI HD 4350 GPU. [no fan] [HDMI:DVI:D-SUB] type.
Previous card ATI 9200 SE/series.
No problems what soever with the previous card.
System: XP pro 32- SP3
Asus P5VD1-X mainboard, 2GB DDR Ram in 2 slots, Intel 775 3.2ghz dual core processor. 350W powersupply. 2 harddrives, pushed Virtual memory to like the highest it can let me.
PC is always overheating, but it hardly crashes due to it unless outside is realllly hot. But that is with the previous card. With the 4350hd however… there is nothing i can do but play games… Plays perfectly with left 4 dead and flatout ultimate carnage. other open GL games that ate the previous card.. run flawlessly… but simple tasks like rightclicking on photo’s and zoomin on photos, watching AVI, MOV, etc movies, scrolling text Files… the machine freezes almost immediately, and always gets an unresponsive error from the 4350.
I have been diag. the problem. i Realised that it has something to do with layers and overlays and partial transpariencies. E.g. menu shadows, Faded menu animations. and menu’s appearing over photo’s and movies screens[rightclicks]. Therefore i tried to push the whole movie thing using a 3D rendered option in my movieplayer.. worked however 3 mins of video is all i got b4 it started again. So tested more. Winamp skins, dragging windows around and fullscreen- window stress testing…. Epic FAIL!! Its the layering and overlaying task handlin of the cards… things like Aero and such would fail quickly, i refuse to try it.
Someone told me it was my DDR Ram, because its DDR on my board and DDR2 on the card. its not keepin up WITH the card. BUT Y would it cause the card to hang IN my system and not IN games which push it harder?
My solution was to turn the card’s clockin down[underclock it]
Then go in troubleshooting in “display adapters” menu from the desktop and turn off the Direct draw… yes.. turn it off… and it even worked better with the direct 3d off also… but here is the F’d up part. no 3d gaming. and all movies worked without fail… isnt that retarded… Now to test photoshop and illustrator capabilities…
Works perfectly with adobe suite…. its just lame windows GUI errors. Who tests these products b4 they hit the market anyways huh??
Hello,
I seem to have found a solution that was causing this particular problem in my PC.
My pc consists of intel D865PERL motherboard and Asus AH4650 AGP video card and service pack 3.
For testing I used graphic intensive game Fallout 3 witch used to crash after half a minute of gaming with ati2dvag.dll error and messed up desktop properties.
I tried everything described in this topic and in my case I believe that one helpful aspect was fixing my device manager with “show hidden devices” option. In my case there were dozens of unknown devices, lots of duplicated monitor drivers and old ATI programs such as smartgart and atytray under “non plug and play drivers”. Keep in mind that I did device manager clean up after uninstalling all Ati files and registry with driversweeper. Sometimes driversweeper finds files to be deleted but it cant delete them, in such case you have to delete these files manually under safe mode.
Now, after cleaning device manager I still wasnt able to install newest ati hotfix drivers so that CCC would run. Why?
I went to msconfig and found that windows tried to automatically boot/run old ATI programs (It even tried to run omegadrivers wich I didnt have anymore). I removed these instances with the help of ccleaner.
Now I tried again to install newest ati hotfix (10.9) drivers and for my surprise everything went well (CCC started to work). To be on the safe side I downclocked my GPU-s memory speeds (about 20%) in Ati catalyst control center. Now I tested again Fallout 3 and I have’nt had any problems since.
Later on I’ll try to return my GPU’s clock speed to factory defeaults to see if this was the particular case.
Bottom line: Clean your device manager, clean your startup and boot instances in msconfig.
I even didnt have to start using PCI to PCI bridge and disable write combination (They didnt help, I tried them at first).
I wish you good luck
Hi Eirik,
Interesting. Is the CCC you mentioned above, CCleaner?
Hello DarrinW
CCC stands for catalyst control center wich is a program that comes with ATI driver package and installs automatically.
Ah…thanks for clarifying; I forgot that.
I seem to be having a similar problem, but it seems way worse for me. I can’t even boot into safemode without getting a bsod. I am getting several different bsods depending on how I boot the computer, but the central theme is the ati error. How can I solve the problem if I can’t boot and get to the control panel to delete the faulty drivers?
I got the same issue on a Dell PC. But even worse…. I cannot boot at all. Just a few beeps when I power on. Power light goes on, but nothing on the screen. I cannot even access boot screen or setup screen. I guess I should try a different graphics card?
Anything ATI is eventualy going to cause problems.
I don’t know why I keep buying them.
I have a Radeon 9200 and I’m running XP SP2 on a shop built machine, not playing games. But I get the issue every time I have a problem like a backdoor virus and have to re install the drivers in safe mode. This time it was a “modified theme” in the display properties that I couldn’t get rid of so I had to select safe mode and kill it manually. Interestingly system restore never works when you need it most.
Usually I go to desktop/right click/properties/settings/advanced and select the troubleshoot tab. There I de- select “enable write combining” and that usually does the trick. But I have clicked several things on the ATI control centre which is more trouble than it’s worth. I have a machine in the basement with an old AGP card in it and if it doesn’t work this time I will swap them over. I used to swear by ATI cards but sadly I wouldn’t buy one now or recommend one. This ATI2Dvag blue screen of death has been around for some years now ………..why no fix?
I started seeing this problem on a desktop computer that had been running faithfully since I had built it several years ago. I’m adding this as I seem to be noticing several similarities in hardware for people that are having this problem i.e.. an MSI motherboard running an nvidia chipset with VIA, windows XP, and an ATI video card. My particular computer is using a MSI K9N6PGM-F model motherboard, an AMD AM2 dual core 2gig processor, and an ATI HD3850 video card which is a 512MB PCIe video card..
I searched online for over a week attempting to find a software solution in the vain hope that it wasn’t a hardware failure (When purchased, the video card cost $400)… I was reluctant to consider that this was a hardware issue. Most of the fixes I’d found online were oriented towards manually reinstalling the driver for the CPU-AGP bridge.. which I thought was useless for a PCI card, but I’d decided to do the same with the PCI-PCI bridge, of which there were 4 on my computer… and beings I had no idea which one was for which card, I’d opted to manually reinstall the driver for all 4 of them. This, unfortunately, did nothing. I also pulled the video card out of the computer and cleaned the fan and heat sink cooling fins of built up dust… of which approx. 30% of the cooling fins were blocked from airflow by the buildup. Again, no difference. Finally, I opted to format the hard drive and reinstall everything from scratch. During the 2 days that followed, I installed all windows critical updates including SP3 (so I know it’s not just a SP2 issue), and updated the video card drivers to the newest version which had, coincidentally, been published by ATI 10 days previously. I was so happy that during that time, the computer showed no indication of siezing or the dreaded blue screen of death…. until today.
Today I experienced the BSOD once and a computer freeze twice. Judging by everything I’ve discovered, it can be narowed down to 2 possible causes.
1: an actual hardware failure with the video card.. only possible option is to replace.
2: an occasional failure due to hardware incompatibilities due to having an MSI motherboard with an NVIDIA chipset utelizing VIA chipset hardware and an ATI video card. If this is an AGP video card, the driver repair solution may work. I haven’t been able to test this as my vid card is PCIe… but from what I’ve gathered the only clear solution for people using the above motherboards and chipsets is to replace the ATI video card with one from another vendor. And if you decide to do so, I think the only way to go would be an NVidia card..
I wish I had any more clear-cut answers for people who paid good money for their ATI cards, but the simple truth of the matter is that certain chipset/vid card combinations are simply incompatible with each other. They may fail after 5 years, 3 months, or one hour… but they will end up failing due to some random combination of events.
One thing I HAVE noticed though, it seems that the ati2dvag error seems to be exclusive to PCI or PCIe cards, while the ati2dvag.dll error seems to relate only to AGP video cards.. not sure if it makes a difference, but it’s at least something to think about.
Of course, there could be a few things I missed… but also, my most common crash seems to be when Internet explorer is open. Oddly enough, whenever I’m running graphics intensive programs like Fallout 3 or Mass Effect 2, the computer never crashes at all… only if IE is running at the time..
Hey Richie R.
I have simular issue as you do. I have an ATI HD 3600 PCie installed (with onboard xpress200 disabled). It has worked absolutly fine for couple of years then i updated drivers to AMD’s latest couple of weeks back and got this BSOD issue ever since. I have done everything suggested in every since website to still not find a solution. Even running my card with no drivers (well just the windows default, not ATI one) and i still get the issue. re-format and the likes, still no help.
Anyway.. you say that the it only happens when you use IE, which interestingly enough is when it happens to me too. I can run games and other programmes fine without issues, even other web browsers are fine. However i recently discovered that any application from Microsoft Office (in my case 2003) also triggers the BSOD sometimes.. have you experianced this ?
There seems to be some issue with Microsoft and ATI that is for certain, i can’t believe it’s been around for so long and there is no definate fix/solution to such a wide scaled problem :s
Oh and just a bit of extra info, after i re-formatted i didnt re-install MS Office so i could see if that was causing the issue in some way. Without that installed i still got the BSOD. Windows update installed the SP3 as expected and i refused the installed of IE8 so that i ran on the default setup from install disk, which is IE7.. and again i still got the BSOD.. so it isnt IE8 either.. i’m totally lost.
Hello,
I had the same issue with an ATI Radeon HD 3400 series running under XP SP3. Today I can state that the issue comes from Windows update. Recently (end of December 2010) I made a Windows update and suddenly started to have the crashes. I read and tried pretty much everything written about on the net. I was about to abandon the graphic card and buy another one, when my son gave me the idea to make a roll back of the system. Fortunately I keep backups of the system so I was able to restore the system with updates level August 2010 and never get the issue since. So the conclusion is that one of the critical updates proposed by Microsoft have a bug (could be related to .net). Today the driver level is 6.14.10.7111 and the latest windows updates are from 12 august 2010.
Maybe is not a big help but is reliable information.
Best regards.
Stefan Zuban
I inherited a PC with Athlon XP2400+, 40GB 5400rpm HDD, 512MB DDR RAM, nVidia chipset, integrated video. It was woefully slow so I upgraded it with new 160GB 7200rpm HDD, added an extra 512MB DDR RAM I had, installed a new Sapphire Radeon HD 3450 AGP video card with 512MB DDR2 64BIT RAM. Fresh install of XP Pro / SP3, bypassed driver CD and installed Catalyst 10.11 Hotfix driver. After a day or so, I started to get the ATI2DVAG blue screen error, freeze followed by the blue screen. I totally uninstalled that, purged the system, using CCleaner and JV16 Power Tools and installed the newly available 10.12 driver, but same result. This was on a fresh hard drive, no previous history of graphics drivers. As I don’t play games much that require latest drivers I purged 10.12 and installed 8.64 from the CD that came with the video card. That has been totally reliable since.
I had thought it was a problem with AGP cards but extensive research shows it is not, and seems to affect all kinds of computers, including laptops. Clearly there is something broken in the driver somewhere. It is amazing that ATI have not shown the will the fix this.
Just bought two Lenovo H215 and downgraded to XP. During the re-format and subsequent started getting BSOD with “ati2dvag…infinite loop…” text. Long story short, after many hours of trying all the suggestions on this forum and others, I installed an Nvidia GeForce 8400GS (about $45). So far, no BSOD! I’m enjoying current genius status!
I was having this problem every day with my new Asus board, which has a Radeon HD 4200 built-in. I dropped the GPU clock from 500MHz (the default) down to 400MHz and have not had any issues since.
Stefan,
I think you are right. It seems to be related to a windows update. I re-installed windows and am currently using ATI video drivers 6.14.0010.6973. I updated windows XP Home Media Edition (32-bit) with any update published before September 14, 2010 (SP3, too). All is well and no more BSOD relating to the ati2dvag error….so far.
Hope that helps people,
Landon
@ TheBorderReiver
I always felt it has something to do with windows + hardware, so it is intriguing that so far it seems to be a solution for you.
Hi peepo,
I think Net 2.0 is to blame. Uninstall Net 2.0 and run Net 1.1 instead.
..sometimes old hardware requires old code….
AlwaysRight,
I’m currently running .net 3.5 SP1 with no adverse results. Were you able to fix it by uninstalling .Net 2.0?
The windows ATI driver update caused me problems to. Rolled back and it is more stable. I had to discard one of my ATI cards .. it broke and I’m running now on one 3870? .. i guess it is an old afterall (12 months?).. windows 7 seems more stable that XP for this problem although W7 graphic hangs occasionally although I dont get the blue screen .. just hangs. ATI is not on my shopping list anymore. Notice it when playing Halo.. I hear a clicking sound in the box .. I know when that happens I have a limited time to save or shut down. Graphic intensive seems to be the trigger.
Started getting this issue just recently with the ati2vdvag loop blue screen after updating to the newest CCC from the ATI website. I’ve had problems with this Sapphire 4870 1gb card from the beginning. In games like Oblivion, Fallout3, sometimes WoW and SC2 there would be square chunks of the textures missing on random models and there would be bright pink light shining through.
Also the card never ran as fast as it should have and underclocking/heat was not the problem after many different setups and tests. I have an Asus Striker Extreme mobo with Nvidia chipset, 3gigs of ram, Pentium Dual core 3ghz CPU, 700w OCZ GameXstream PSU, running WinXP with SP3. All my hardware is pretty high end new stuff, at least newer than most of the hardware I’ve seen listed so far and the problem is still there.
Switching from Nvidia graphics cards to Radeon was the worst mistake I’ve ever made. I’ve tried updating bios drivers, graphics drivers, reinstalling windows, all I’ve done is succeeded in adding this blue screen error every time I boot windows to the list of problems. I haven’t needed to do a windows update in a while so I don’t think that’s the cause on my machine and I never use IE, only Firefox so I don’t think thats the issue either. I’ve been running .net 3.5 since I installed Windows the last time (about 8 months ago) and this was never a problem.
The first time I saw this issue was during heavy modding to Morrowind (which runs shittier than Oblivion with this card for some reason, prolly just the games fault though) so I figured I should check for ATI updates. I found a new one just released a week ago and installed it, now I get the blue screen infinite loop error every boot up, I had to tell Windows to boot with the last known working configuration to be able to post this. I have no advice for existing victims of this issue but maybe with the new affected specs someone can narrow it down to something we can work with.
Hi!
I have the dreaded ati2dvag problem too with an hd 3850 Radeon.
It began in end August 2010 (Cf Stefan Zuban’ message)
Since it’s a dual boot system, I found it strange that it happens only on my XP and not on Vista.
As far as I know there is no Ati2dvag.dll on Vista(catalyst 10.9 on this one, 11.1 for xp) Correct me if I’m wrong.
I have this error only when I am surfing the web, either with firefox or explorer.
I read somewhere that some codecs (installed by the catalyst) could be the culprits or maybe there are conflicts between the driver and Adobe Flash Player.
Hope that helps.
hi.
i built a computer last summer,msi mobo,2.66ghz core 2 duo,4gb ocz ram,ati 256mb pci-e vid..lots of bells and whistles.with xp pro sp3.
?
i’d say sometime in the fall i started getting the ati2dvag error. i would get it while listening to music and viewing photos and would also get it while having my pc tv tuner running in the background while surfing the net.
i finally got around to installing windows 7 on a spare drive around christmas time and have had zero issues.
just yesterday i decided to grab another spare hdd and do a reinstall of xp but i decided this time to use my sp2 disc and upgrade it.
imagine the words that came out of my mouth when i got the error not even an hour ago!
so i found this page and here i am:) or should that be
simple fix: buy a new video card or buy windows 7
my problem is that i have some software that will not run in windows 7 period so i need xp!
i am currently putting together one of my old computers to run xp and i will be sure it will not have an ati video card in it…but will it have enough power to run nero 7 stable???
i’m not much help on solutions but i thought that i would share my story since i see some similarities with other peoples experiences.
Re: Amberose
Hey sorry I haven’t checked back in for such a long time. To answer your question, I hardly ever use MS Office… but I’ll try running some stress-tests with that program and see what I can come up with.
Also, for all of those that are considering that windows Updates might have inadvertently caused the issue, some time this week I will try reinstalling windows with no service packs and then test stability incrementally as new updates get installed. This’ll be a long and drawn out process, but if it IS caused by an update then I’ll be able to narrow down which one(s) are causing the problems.
Dear All,
I’ve run into this ati2dvag BSOD problem a few days ago. I’ve bought an HD 3830 card, and with the Catalyst 11.02 my WinXP SP3 system has started the BSOD but only in 2D mode, on desktop, especially when I ran Explorer and Excel (as someone mentioned above). 3D apps ran fine, e.g. 3DMarks (2001SE,03,05,06) and games.
Before the HD 3830 I used some other cards: 3850, 4850 and 4770. They ran fine without any problem. My system’s base is an Abit KN9 Ultra with nForce 570 Ultra chipset. It’s been working for 4 years flawlessly.
Then I found this topic, I hoped it helps me, but unfortunately it didn’t. I was worried that the card may be defective. I cleaned the card’s PCIe connector with rubber and drugstore alcohol, but no effect.
Than I switched back from Cat 11.02 to 10.11, but nothing has changed. I continued it and switched back to Cat 10.07, and with a huge relieve I saw that it works! No BSOD under Explorer or Excel, neither under other apps. But the TV-out doesn’t work in Windows, only under boot sequence.
Then I downloaded the Cat 10.08 and installed it. The TV-out is working again, and still no BSOD for 2 days.
So my conclusion is that if you have BSOD, try older drivers for your card. I do not know what is the exact problem; maybe ATI (AMD) did some changes in the driver what isn’t good for older cards.
It is miserable – all of us have this nasty problem but “The Great OEM” are conveniently silent… I will never use this type of video SW/HW… I hate it!
is the problem on the graphic card???if i change the grafic card will the problem be fixed???please help me…
Hi, my PC is an Intel dual CPU E2160 @ 1.80 Ghz with ATI Radeon 2400HDPRO display card, WXP SP3, it’s about 3 years I,ve been working without a problem… not more then 5 days ago it begun to get in tremendous blue screen crash. I got it was a video card driver problem, so I downloaded the last ATI drver for my card. The problem wasn’t solved: now I get a blue screen at least one a day, and the messages says the error concerns ati2dvag. Now I’ve read this thread, is it possible that noway exists to fix it by the producers? Never got similar problems with nVidia card… may be it’s time to come back to that brand!
I’m having the same issue (ati2dvag)i started getting this when i was watchin vido on youtup as i had to update flashplayer so i do not know, but my problem started with updating flasher player.
thanks all
I recently built a new computer and get this error sometimes when using the windows search feature in xp.
I had it occur twice on a benchmark program that has run dozens of times before and after without it.
It happens most often in firefox when watching a flash video-specially if I have a game running in the background. That being said, it never happens when just playing the game and I can watch hours of movies online with a game running in the background and not have it happen.
I have noticed that without anything running a few flash ads I have moused over have instantly caused it.
Seems somewhat random.
To follow-up on the Flash connection; I began having the ati2dvag issue (discovered in Event Logs) with just crashes to desktop while playing only Xfinity content. This happened twice so I updated Flash. From then on I began getting the ati2dvag issue no matter what I was doing (so far, never gaming) *AND* my comp no longer crashed to desktop but BSOD’s with the ati2dvag loop error (0x000000EA) every time. I upgraded to Cat 11.2 but no change. I am now going to try earlier drivers.
XP Pro 32-bit SP2
AMD/ATI Chipset Radeon 32xx HD
I had problems with Catalyst drivers in the past (pre-AMD) so I went with NVidia. When I built this comp I took a friends recommendation that AMD-based Catalyst drivers were stable. Next computer = NVidia.
Give you all an update on the tests that I’ve been running. I haven’t been able to find a stable configuration in windows that’ll prevent this problem. Even using a fresh install of windows pre-SP1 still has glitches and BSOD appearing. As near as I can figure that somewhere along the line there was a software issue that caused an infinite loop in one of the chips on the board, which resulted in damage that only allows for partial functionality in the chip. This causes the infinite loop problem in the main GPU which results in the system crashes we’ve all been experiencing. Granted, I don’t know this as a definite fact, but it seems to be a pretty likely scenario. I’m wondering also if it might be some previously unnoticed design flaw in the 2000, 3000, and 4000 series HD cards.
But bottom line, I tried just about everything I can think of short of hiring an engineer to map all the pathway similarities between the various cards and no dice. Starting to look like there’s no way to fix the problem except replacing the video card. Sorry guys, I gave it my all.
I added a HD3850 to an old agp computer. Set up a dual boot with XP and 7. XP was eventually sorted and has no “infinite loop” problem. & however hs to recover from the “loop” whenever I use internet explorer. Has yet to crash using firefox. AMD blames microsoft and microsoft blames the ATI driver (even though I had tried the microsoft supplied HD3850 1.1 driver). I would rather give up explorer 8 than the card, so too bad for microsoft. Interesting note is 3DMark03 scores better in 7 than xp but games seem about the same, and network access is much faster in 7.. Installing the 3850agp was the biggest pain I have faced computing, every thing from the old nforce2 compatibility issues, to faulty ati installers. NVidia next time, of course it won’t be on such old equipment.
Should say “7, however, has to recover from the “loop” ….
Sorry bad typist!
finally got around to upgrading from XP to Windows 7 .. amazingly enough that seems to have solved the problem for me so far …hope it lasts ..
I do not want to give false hopes but I fixed my problem using Internet using Chrome (google). It is installed since February 20 and I have not had a single crash since. I tried again Internet explorer and Firefox two days ago and I had a BSOD immediately with both.
I think it’s worth a try.
This problem appeared several months ago after I recieved an update on my video card driver. Before that update, I had experienced no issues what so ever. Yet afterwards, I began experiencing the random crashes. These did not link to games being played, mostly to just simple web surfing and facebook. With some assisstance with a few friends, we also noticed the temperature spikes.
In the end, I removed all of the drivers and reinstalled. Luckily this seems to have done the trick, and for the past few months I have not had anymore issues. Though I am contemplating a differnt card in hopes of evading the issue at a later date.
Good luck to everyone dealing with this, hopefully a true solution will be found soon. Hate to see the buisness crash over this glitch.
Hi All,
Thought I would chip in with my 50 cents.
We have reimaged 2 suites of computers over the last month with EXACTLY the same image. A total of 25 machines.
They are all experiencing the BSOD at some point, some days a few will, other days none will.
This can’t be an individual machine issue, it must be a OS / driver issue. That much is clear. They are all Dell Optiplex 755 Towers with ATI Radeon HD 2400.
The image was created on a completely differen machine (a 755 without the ATI card) and has been deployed on many machines with no issue. We deployed this image to these machines and then updated the driver to ATI Radeon HD 2400. We have also tried to use the PRO version of the driver with no luck.
Strangely enough we have a suite of exactly the same 755 Tower machines with an old image (SP2) and none of them have ever had this issue.
I will take one of these computers out of this room , image it with the new image and let you know of my testings!!
Hi, I’ve just tried several drivers and nothing, still the ati2dvag.dll loop crash, tried out the PCItoPCI change and it just minized the problem (still happens)
But, at least I fugured out a way to do this:
If i search for files… BOOM! it crashes, give it a try and let me know (second click on a folder, search, ‘anything’, let the search go, suddenly, frozen screen, frozen mouse… dead)
Obviusly this is not the only way to trigger it, windows seems to use certain operations to do this somewhere else (I just dont know where), because also when using firefox and stuff happens.
Now, I’m just afraid to search for a file
BTW, first amd card… result? hating it forever.
Hello my fellow ATI-victims,
I am running Win XP Home SP3 and have a 3850HD PCIe card by ATI. After some driver update I kept getting the BSODs as well. From what I have gathered over the months, there’s different problems with the PCIe and the AGP cards; I can only speak to the PCIe trouble.
Using Firefox or IE I keep getting bluescreens as mentioned in many posts. I tried pretty much everything except a rollback or an update to Win7 or Vista. Given the right rollback, both things should work as a fix for the PCIe cards. For now, I am very grateful to the poster Bertrand, because using GoogleChrome really takes care (of most) of my problems. Since switching away from Firefox and IE I have not had a single BSOD. While I prefer the Mozilla browser, I managed to adjust to Chrome and while this is not a solution to whatever is up with these videocards/drivers, it’s a reliable (as of now) workaround.
Therefore, if you are getting bluescreens while using IE or Firefox and have a PCIe card that shows the ati2dvag error in the BSOD, this might be something for you.
On the other hand, if your bluescreen shows the ati2dvag.dll error, you probably have the AGP card and this is probably not for you as you will, from what my understanding is, get the BSODs mostly in games or other graphic intensive apps. I’ve never had any trouble playing games in HD, but always browsing the web. What the hell… In case you do have an AGP card and get BSODs while browsing the internet on IE or Firefox, still try Chrome, but I am just not sure if it’ll help any. You folks will be in the PCI-bridge camp and you may not even solve your problems with a different OS.
Good luck; hopefully the day will come, when the manufacturer takes care of this.
“search” trigger it for me too
As I mentioned it earlier, I fix the “surf” issue by using Chrome but I am at loss for this one. And just ten minutes ago, I had this bug by launching “about avast” and “X3 terran conflict” launcher in the same time.
this is definitely not a hardware problem!
Hey Everybody, it’s me again.. I’ve posted several times looking for a solution to the ever-present problem we’ve all been plagued with. I managed to find a post on the AMD web site forums regarding this problem. It appears that the problem IS involving the ATI Catalyst drivers in conjunction with microsoft OS’s. Using Catalyst version 10.10 is apparently the latest driver version that doesn’t have this problem. 10.11 and later all appear to cause this bug.
I’ve tried it with my vid card (Reminder: it’s a Radeon HD3850 PCIe) and have been running for 9 hours now without a single crash, BSOD, or glitch. Some games may pop up with a warning screen stating your video card drivers may be out of date, but I’d just ignore it beings I’m able to run StarCraft 3, Fallout 3, and Mass Effect 2 all with the graphics turned all the way up with no problems whatsoever.
So, go to the AMD web site and go to the drivers page, put in your info and when it brings up the drivers available, just below them there should be a small arrow and the underlined words “Previous Drivers” it’ll bring up a list of drivers and you’re looking for the Catalyst version 10.10 which was released 10/22/2010. Download them and save them somewhere… desktop’s easiest, but whatever you prefer, then uninstall the ATI catalyst drivers that you have installed already. MAKE SURE THAT IT COMPLETES SUCCESSFULLY. This includes rebooting after the uninstall. Then, after the reboot, wait for windows to detect the new hardware. Instead of searching for drivers just hit cancel. It’ll say something about your device may not work properly, but who cares. Just ignore it. Once that is done double-click and install the 10.10 version and then reboot again. Hopefully, you should notice that your computer isn’t crashing anymore.
If your “Newer” version catalyst drivers didn’t uninstall correctly, or if your card’s still giving you problems please let me know and I’ll be glad to see if there’s anything I can do for you. Also, I’m very anxious to see just how many people’s problem this will fix. I’m willing to bet a great deal, beings we all seem to have very similar cards and pretty much EXACTLY the same problem… So Here’s hoping this takes care of it!
@ Richie
Looks promising.
Thanks Richie. I have an ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro in XP SP3 and I tried updating to the 10.10 Catalyst package after uninstalling the drivers (no catalyst software installed) and once I rebooted the drivers were automatically reinstalled before I could stop it(8.821.0.0 dated jan 26 2011). I tried installing over the top and it did not take the older drivers and Catalyst will not start giving an inablility to initialize.
Suggest?
2 days and still no problems. Hoping everyone’ll try this.
@ Abby
Try uninstalling the new version drivers and installing the 10.10 version without rebooting in between. Sometimes the computer doesn’t like that, but it might work. Don’t attempt to install an older version over the top of a newer version though, It’ll cause even more instability… even though the system says “Unable to update” or some such thing, sometimes a file or 2 creeps through before the system prevents it, which’ll mess up the whole works.
ATI HD2600 XT in a Dell Poweredge 800 server with W.XP Pro SP3 32 bit. This machine had no audio until installed sound card. In BIOS ATI card is listed twice: ‘VGA adapter’ and ‘multimedia’. Sound card listed as Creative Labs multimedia.
Common message is – New Hardware detected – ATI HD audio device. I did as suggested and disabled the ATI audio device. Messages gone but still questioned in device manager.
Did a full uninstall of latest ATI version with no CCC and reinstalled with CCC included.
Generic W.XP Nvidia and ATI video drivers are always reloaded AFTER use Driver Sweeper. Could be from a i386 cabinet in there somewhere.
Actually crashes when use Windows Search. Latest version is v. 4.0. Windows Search 4.0 is junk because it fails to work with indexing service. Avoid it!
re: March 28, 2011 post from Richie R.
I recently put together an HTPC using a GigaByte motherboard with the AMD ati Radeon Series 7 chipset. Got the BDOD every time I tried surfing the web with Internet Explorer. I’ve spent the last 2 weeks looking for a solution until I happened upon this thread. Tried your fix downloading the 11.10 Catalyst Driver and am happy to report the problem has gone away! Surfed for over an hour and no BSOD!!!! Many thanks Richie for the hours of work you must have spent on this troublesome issue. I am etrnally grateful for your efforts.
Re: Jeff B.
Glad to hear it Jeff. ATI just recently produced a new version but haven’t had a chance to test it yet. Will let everyone know whether or not these newest drivers have the same bug or not.
Thanks for this blog and the comments, it’s saved me a lot of time.
I reinstalled Windows XP last weekend: everything went smoothly until BAM, sudden BSOD – ati2dvag reported as a problem, ‘infinite loop’ etc….you know the drill.
All I knew was, the ATI HD 3400 driver had parked itself on my machine via Windows updates, whereas I knew I’d installed it originally from an AMD download.
But newer drivers are better, right?
Well, no. Thanks to Richie R’s March 28 comment for putting me right on that.
I took mine right back to the driver on the CD, which is ancient, but everything works fine, with no more BSODs. Big thanks to Richie and everyone on this blog.
@ Alexia
That’s good news
So, it looks like the newest version (11.3) appears to be stable. Have yet to encounter any problems with it.
Also having the ati2dvag problem, but my pc doesn’t even make it in to windows, can I consider myself f*cked ?
At first I thought my monitor was broken, but now with a new monitor i get the blue screen saying ati2dvag is causing problems. Did not happen with my old screen but that one was trippin’ even when it wasn’t connected to anything but the powercable. Not that it was such a crappy screen or anything, samsung thingy or whatever.
But I can’t even get into windows, so the solutions with reinstalling drivers and others can’t help me fix it. It won’t even boot in safe mode, just giving me the blue screen.
Thanks for any help,
Daniel
Daniel,
I was having the same issue…I couldn’t get it to even make it to windows. But after persistantly rebooting (by pressing the button on the tower) all day long…I finally got it to load windows without any problems. This is the second time this has happened to me in the last few months and it is always after I have shut it down and unplugged it because we were going away for the weekend. I am currently trying some of the fixes that I have found online in hopes that one of them will work…I just hope I don’t make something worse while trying! LOL!
I also have the same problem with ati2dvag file. Both me an my co-worker. Only that we don’t get it while we’re using our PC, but in the morning when we’re turning them on.
The way we fix it: we unplug both cables ftom HDD and put them right back. Next time we turn on PC it works, but the first several minutes it’s somewhat slower.
I realy hope they find the solution to this problem.
I have a Dell Dimension.. so a few years old.
It started having the symptoms alrady referred to – blue screen, blank screen after power save, programs crashing, and a lot of over heating !
I took a mixture of the advices given above.
I loaded the CCC tool. it made matters worse, so I removed this and all the drivers (using the AT uninstall program), and let the system re-load the old drivers as the system found the new hardware.
I found a secondary screen driver that I disabled.
Then I used the software removal tool in Control Panel, to remove the version 2 of MS .NET and that didnt help either… so I removed them all.. 1,1, 2, 3, 3.5 and 4.
Then ran MS UPdate. It loaded 3.5 with some parts of 1.1 and 2. I ran MS Update a couple of times to get all the updates.
Since then (1 week ago) it has run pretty well. Not perfect but no overheats and only once a blue screen….