Hello.

My name's Kyle, and I'm a first time poster.  From the looks of these forums, it looks like this is the community who knows the "ins and outs" of Windows XP, and boy, do I need your help! 

I own a Dell Dimension XPS with a Pentium 4 processor.  It's just over 3 years old, and several months ago I successfully installed an ATI PowerColor x1950 Pro AGP graphics card.  Several days ago, I decided to upgrade to the new driver, and so I visited ATI's website, and followed their directions word-for-word.

I uninstalled the old "7-1..." driver via XP's "Add or Remove Programs" screen, rebooted, deactivated my anti-virus/anti-spyware program ZoneAlarm, and then proceeded to startup the new driver's executable (the new driver begins with "7-7...").  Everything proceeded smoothly until the InstallShield portion kicked in.  At that point, I get the following message:

Severe
Setup will only run in Administrator mode. Setup is aborting.
[OK]


At that point, the installation procedure comes to a complete halt. 

After each of these incidents I find that a 0.11 MB ATI program has been installed on my system, but it's such a tiny install that even the "ATI" logo is blurred when it's listed on the "Add or Remove Programs" screen.  I uninstall this puny
program every time I go through this torturous procedure.

I have contacted ATI, and a couple of online forums that I frequent for support.  ATI was pretty good at responding at least once a day, but I made last post there on Friday evening, and haven't heard from them since.  Their last post to me was essentially focused on how it was a "...permissions..." issue, and one that Microsoft was responsible for. 

I'm not going to go into exquisite detail here about every little step that I've taken while trying to solve this problem.  What I am going to do is present some of the broader steps in the hopes that maybe someone here can help me.

1. I installed Driver Cleaner Pro and used it to remove all of the leftover ATI driver files (there were a lot of them).

2. I logged in as the Administrator in Safe Mode.  I created a new User Account, and attempted to install the "7-7..." driver from there, with the only result being the same Severe error message noted above.

3. Following ATI's advice, I uninstalled Windows .NET Framework v.1.1 and v.2.0, and then reinstalled Win .NET Framework 2.0.  Restarted, and tried installing the Catalyst "7-7..." driver, leading to the above Sever error report.

4. I attempted to install the driver while logged in as the Administrator in Safe Mode.  It resulted in the following error message:

Severe
Setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware or operating system. Setup will now exit.
[OK]



5. Noticing that the error report was different this time, I decided to reboot in Safe Mode again, and decided to install just the driver, without installing Catalyst.  ATI had the driver-only executable listed for those who desired it, and that's the file I used for this next step.  When I tried to install just the driver, I received the following error message:

Severe
DirectX 8 is not installed. Please install it before installing the display driver.
[OK]

After I right-clicked on OK, I was asked if I wanted to proceed with the installation. I told the system to proceed, and it ran through the installation process up to the point that I received the following:

Severe
Setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware or operating system. Setup will now exit.
[OK]

It should be noted that I have DirectX 9.0c already installed.


6. An online friend supplied me with the unpacked "7-7..." driver-only files.  Following the screenshots of where the files were located on his system, I copied/pasted mine into the corresponding directories.  When I rebooted the system, the graphics card was not enabled, so we're assuming that the driver files were not recognized.  I have since used Driver Cleaner Pro to remove these files.

7. I was informed from an online friend that it's impossible to install graphic drivers while logged into Safe Mode's Administrator user account, because the system is setup not to even try to activate the graphics card.  Several attempts were made to try and activate the "Safe Mode-only" Administrator account while in the "normal" mode, all with no success (one method had me run regedit, to put a "1" inside a doc entitled "Administrator"--no such doc was found in my directory, Ctrl+Alt+Delete twice at the Win Login screen which didn't do anything, and installing/using a little program which also did nada).  It was later determined that even if we could get the Administrator user account to be displayed on the Windows login screen in "normal" mode, that it still wouldn't have been possible to login with that account because such a feature is only available for the Professional edition of Win XP. 

8. I have tried to track where/what ATI's driver was doing by simultaneously running Regmon and Filemon.  I was unable to save their reports because my system froze up, and I had to hard crash the computer.

9. And "Yes," I do have Administrator rights for my User Account.  In fact, it was the first User Account made after the operating system was installed.



I'm fairly confident that in spite of this late hour, I have touched upon all of the major points of the history of this extremely frustrating endeavor.

I'm stumped as to why it is that even though I created a new User Account with Administrator privileges while logged in with Safe Mode's Administrator's user account, that I keep getting the Setup will only run in Administrator mode. Setup is aborting. OK error message.

I confused that if I can't install the ATI driver because of having permissions issues, why it is that I am able to install several other programs since the error messages started appearing (Filemon, Regmon, Driver Cleaner Pro, and more...)?

Why were the installation error messages different while in Safe Mode when every time an attempt is made in normal mode I keep getting the same error?

My fingers are very tightly crossed that this problem is correctable.  The last thing I want to do is have to reinstall the OS along with everything else.  Especially being stuck with a dialup connection.  I had to install a new hard drive 5 months ago, and it seemed like it took just as long to get all of the necessary Updates downloaded/installed just in order for us not to have humongous security holes while we cruised the net. 

Any detailed help that can be directed our way would be deeply appreciated.

Yours,

Kyle
Aug. 7, 2007

 
 

Squeezebox,

The "why don't you revert" suggestion was given to me earlier on another forum, and unfortunately, I only received that suggestion after I had already recycled the old driver files.  And every time I tried running the driver that I did have the system, the "7-1..." driver, I kept getting the error message that plagued me when I was trying to install the "7-7..." driver, regarding not being in Administrator mode.

That said, you brought up about not updating drivers unless one is actually encountering a problem, and it struck me that the only option that I hadn't tried was trying to install from the ATI disc that came with the card.  I never used that disc, as I originally installed the (now old) "7-1..." driver from the Internet. 

So, I put the disc in, and received the following report:

MSSETUP
!  No hardware device found!  Please check your hardware card first or Browse its CD directory for the right driver to install !
[OK]


My first reaction was "Not another new error message!" 

But I decided to reboot the computer with ATI's disc in the CD/DVD player, and when Windows started its "auto install" for a "new device" utility, I had it scan the CD/DVD player, and it detected the driver and even more importantly, installed it...

I restarted the computer, saw that mouse's cursor was now flying across the screen with the greatest of ease, and then I fired up my favorite Unreal Tournament mod "Infiltration," and the game was playing normally.

So, it worked!   

I still have some questions though regarding the whole process.  One of the things that I had done (but forgot to mention) was that I burned the "7-7..." driver to a CD, and I tried using Windows "auto install" utility to install from there, but it never would.  Why could it not find the "7-7..." driver on my CD, but it could find the driver on ATI's?

There was no Win. message having to do anything with being in/or being an Administrator.  How did installing from ATI's disc get around this previously persistent problem?

ATI's Catalyst utility program was not installed from the disc.  I explored the disc, and I have yet to see a file that blatantly states "Catalyst" on it, but that doesn't mean it's not there.  I'm just trying to figure out if the reason why the Catalyst utility wasn't installed was due to design (it's not on the CD) or due to an as yet unannounced glitch.  Does anyone have a hunch as to what the reason may be?

Trust me, I'm thrilled that whatever has been installed is working well enough that I can actually scroll one of my large Excel supply orders within a handful of seconds, rather than taking minutes to choppily scroll from one end to the other.

But I'd still like a little more light shined on the situation.

I'll be looking forward to the responses.

Yours,

Kyle
Aug. 7, 2007