windows 7 64 bit on iMac display problems and instability

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windows 7 64 bit on iMac display problems and instability

I received my iMac 27" quad core with 8 gig ram & 2 x 1 TB hard drives last Friday. I'm using Boot Camp to run windows 7 64 bit on maximum 2560 x 1440 screen resolution.

I get intermittent but often display problems in windows 7. I get areas of the screen covered in little yellow dots or blue squares (never red artefacts.) This will happen at random areas of the screen, inside an open window, around borders of windows and so on. Most often the screen will go black and come back with a message in the bottom right corner of the screen saying 'Display driver has stopped responding and has recovered' with the sub message saying 'display driver ATI radeon family stopped....etc'. Sometimes I lose the screen wallpaper. Once I've had the system just shut down, once I've had Photoshop seize up and I had to do a cold reboot. Could this be an overheating problem or resolution too high problem or driver problem? Windows 7 tells me my drivers are up to date. I tried installing the drivers for the card from ATI's website which made no difference

The reason I bought a Mac is because it's the only effective way to code for the Mac family of OS's in XCode. The reason I didn't just attach a miniMac to my PC monitor was because there's rather a lot of advertising by Apple about the fact that you can use a Mac with a PC OS via Apple's own Boot Camp. Now I have a lot of Windows software (some of which is not available for the Mac or requires buying again) sitting on an unstable system. Any ideas would be much appreciated...

iMac 27, Mac OS X (10.6.3), dual boot using boot camp

Posted on May 27, 2010 1:58 AM

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Answer 1

a2billy

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May 27, 2010 7:23 AM in response to simesf

totally same to my boss's 27" iMac~
installed all updates, just the same~

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Answer 2

The hatter

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May 27, 2010 8:46 AM in response to simesf

Installing Windows 7 graphic drivers iMac Late 2009

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Answer 3

simesf Author

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May 28, 2010 2:19 AM in response to The hatter

Thanks for taking the time to reply to me; I do appreciate the effort. However I'm getting an 'Error, you do not have permission to view the requested forum or category' message which I'm finding confusing since I've logged on & by virtue of the fact that I can type this reply I must be in the system. Does the link you kindly provided relate to a similar problem that Windows 7 users had with a black screen occurring during the installation of the OS? If so, I followed the solution to that problem and downloaded the drivers (albeit the post I followed was one I could google, not one that appeared on an Apple website) and it sorted that problem but I'm left with this one.

So, my first priority should be to see that link you provided to see if it is the solution I tried (which I suspect is the case.) Btw, to the first responder, did your boss find a solution? I', worried that I'll end up with a 'this is not a problem Apple can help with since Windows 7 is not our product' situation.

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Answer 4

MarkN123

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May 28, 2010 2:30 AM in response to simesf

I can confirm that I also do not have permission to read the link.

Furthermore, it helps if you mention which version of the display
driver you are using, together with the driver date and which
ATI card your Mac has.

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Answer 5

simesf Author

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May 28, 2010 4:43 AM in response to MarkN123

Doh! Yes of course; the driver details...

ATI Radeon HD4850 with 512meg video memory on a late 2009 iMac 27"
Chip Type: ATI display adapter(0x944A)
Dac Type: Internal DAC (400MHz)
Driver Date: 23/09/2009
Driver Version: 8.661.0.0

I've clicked the update driver button & tried browsing to the USB drive where I have the iMac late_2009_Win7Drivers folder which I downloaded from the Apple website last night. I included subfolders & it browsed & told me my drivers were up to date. I had to do something similar a week ago when the iMac arrived because I got the black screen problem some users have reported when installing Windows 7 as part of the Boot Camp process.

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Answer 6

MarkN123

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May 28, 2010 6:49 AM in response to simesf

You should update your ATI driver.

Go to www.ati.com.

Fill in the following details:

Graphics
Windows 7 64-Bit Edition
Mobility Radeon
Mobility Radeon HD 4000 Series

and click on "View Results"

Make sure your browser has Flash enabled.

Afterwards install the new driver and let me know if there is still a problem.

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Answer 7

The hatter

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May 28, 2010 10:04 AM in response to MarkN123

Sorry, that thread got moved for edit and as a user tip... which I didn't want and won't be doing....

Here is the post:

A tip and workaround for how to get ATI mobility/laptop drivers so that Windows no longer thinks the ATI is a desktop card:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11286987

Summary (my own edit steps):

1. Install Boot Camp 3.0 and upgrade to 3.1
2. Uninstall graphic drivers and run Driver Sweeper
http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/
instead of:
removing the crashing driver by going into windows 7 setup via its install cd and deleting the ati driver manaully
3. Install ATI Mobility (link)
4. Uninstall ATI (Programs control panel?) Device Manager (rollback; uninstall?)
5. Device Nanager: update driver and BROWSE BACK to 8.681 (the original apple driver that was causing freezes and purple artifacts) - navigate to /Apple/Drivers/ATI

(Apple uses) a 4850 card in the iMac, its modified a bit for apple. Enough that desktop drivers don't work, and modded-for-laptop desktop drivers don't work either.

Now the upshot of using modified drivers is that it FORCES the catalyst control panel to be installed, meaning you get a few more options to mess around with the card.

I couldn't use the original apple drive, it locks up, the newer one had banding, the newer radeon drivers direct form ATI wouldn't work until they were modded and then they cause black screens.

SO the solution, as obscure as it was, was to download ACTUAL mobility Radeon drivers - version 10.3 still, but made for laptops.
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

THESE drivers I was able to install - and here is where things changed.

THIS driver changed they way windows saw the video card in device manager.

As I mentioned before, its NOT a desktop card, its a modified laptop card, but installing mac drivers makes windows THINK its a full desktop card, and running the original 8.681 driver crashed it.
Once installed 10.3 LAPTOP driver it now appeared in device manager as a MOBILITY card.

+These Steps "should" work:+

delete ATI driver manually
reinstall apple driver after that and see if that works,
otherwise try the steps above
(mod drivers, remove via windows recovery off setup disk, install laptop drivers, reinstall apple driver over it)

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Answer 8

MarkN123

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May 28, 2010 10:22 AM in response to The hatter

@Hatter,

I think the steps you described are not necessary anymore.
The mobility drivers downloaded from the ATI site now install
directly. See my previous post for how to download.
You do not have to modify these drivers anymore. At least, it
works for me with an Imac 27 inch with ATI4670 card

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Answer 9

MarkN123

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May 28, 2010 10:23 AM in response to The hatter

@Hatter,

We are now on ATI drivers version 10.5!

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Answer 10

The hatter

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May 28, 2010 11:35 AM in response to MarkN123

Thanks, glad it now works (hadn't seen that reported). Maybe because 10.5 was posted Wednesday 26th. Hopefully those are something that should also be on Apple.support.downloads too. But that is probably expecting too much?

The mobility drivers downloaded from the ATI site now install

directly.

http://support.apple.com/downloads/

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Answer 11

MarkN123

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May 28, 2010 12:26 PM in response to The hatter

The ATI 10.5 Mobility driver still has a bit of color banding. It is not
as worse as the bootcamp 3.1 driver though.

I want to do a comparison with the ATI 8.661.0.0 but I cannot download it
anywhere. Do you know where I can download this driver?

The ATI driver I have is on my Mac OS X 10.6.2 disc and that is the bootcamp
3.1 driver with horrible color banding.

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Answer 12

MarkN123

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May 28, 2010 12:35 PM in response to MarkN123

already downloaded bootcamp 3.0 with the 8.661.0.0 driver.

I will open a new posting with my experiences with the drivers.

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Answer 13

simesf Author

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May 28, 2010 2:04 PM in response to MarkN123

Wow! Certainly plenty of helpful people around here! Thanks for all the suggestions.

I've just installed the latest ATI drivers as per the instructions on the AMD website. Apart from my mouse not working for a while it was fairly smooth. The old drivers were version 8.661.0.0. The latest drivers are 8.732 from the 10.5 suite, dated 04/05/2010 which is a lot more current than the old ones. Now, I have a bank holiday weekend with a 5 year old and a 7 month old and for my sins I'm a hands on dad. So I will report how I get on with these new drivers as & when I can. But given that it's been an intermittent problem (just love them!) it may be best for me to live with them for a few days & see how I get on. In the meantime thanks to one and all for these helpful suggestions. Hopefully by Tuesday I won't be wandering round muttering '2 grand piece of junk!' etc.

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Answer 14

simesf Author

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Jun 1, 2010 2:06 AM in response to simesf

Just to follow up on this thread, I've had the new drivers installed for a couple of days now and so far I've had non of the graphical glitches which plagued me before, so thank you to all who gave helpful suggestions. I made the rookie mistake of not uninstalling the old drivers before installing the new ones, although I've never used Boot Camp before so you do get a bit wary about making changes.

The other hard bit was finding the right drivers since you get different flavours of a particular graphics card & omitting 'mobility' from your searches, for example, can make life a bit more miserable. But so far, touch wood, going to the ATI site with an accurate description of what my graphics card is, then following all the instructions has proved effective. Thanks again.

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