Windows – Why does ATI 5570 HD video card driver installation cause Windows 7 To Blue Screen

amd radeonbsoddriversgraphics cardwindows 7

This one is for the hive mind. I have a brand new Dell Optiplex 760 workstation with 4 gigabytes of RAM running Windows 7 Professional (32bit). This is a new box with nothing installed other than what was provided for directly by Dell. I installed a Saphire ATI PCI Express 5570 HD. Upon trying to install the 10.4 Catalyst drivers the system will blue screen. It blue screens during the hardware detection phase of the installation process. I have already performed the following trouble shooting steps:

  • Changed system RAM
  • Installed only 2 gigabytes of RAM
  • Installed different versions of
    Catalyst drivers (10.4 – 9.12)
  • Tried to install video only component
    of driver (vs entire Catalyst suite)
  • Made sure Windows 7 was fully updated
  • Flashed mother board BIOS to current version
  • Removed and re-seated video card
  • Contacted ATI Support (We all know
    how this went……)
  • Verified supply outputting properly

The blue screen error (via Windows BugCheck entry in event log) is a 0x000000CA and refers to a plug and play error most likely caused by a bad driver. The problem is that the driver installation process never gets far enough to actually install a driver. The resolution center in Windows provides a solution of installing the 10.4 Catalyst driver to resolve issue (which fails).

Looking for some alternate views to resolve.

Best Answer

Solution that worked for me follows:

I have a Sapphire ATI PCI Express 5570 as well and experienced the exact same 0x000000CA BSOD in Windows 7 when trying to install drivers for it. I tried the Catalyst driver on Sapphire's website as well as on ATI's website. I tried Catalyst version 10.4, 10.5, and 10.6 with the same issue. I also tried updating the Optiplex (755) BIOS to A17 and trying various BIOS settings to no avail. The BSOD always occurs when the Catalyst software tries to query the video card.

My work-around was to not let Catalyst query the card. I wish it was as easy as an installation option to avoid the query in the Catalyst install, but of course it can't be that straight-forward. Instead, I let the Catalyst software unzip itself to a location, located the driver .inf files in that location, and manually updated the video card driver (Device Manager->Update Driver->"Let me specify the best driver..."->specify location->etc). Two identically named ATI 5570 drivers presented themselves in the driver selection window, so I chose the first one.

Then I manually installed the Catalyst Control Center by locating just the CCC install files unzipped by the ATI package (I ran two setups, CCC-core I think and another name that resembled CCC-something-or-other. I am probably missing some minor components but the screen resolution, color depth, and CCC features all seem to work fine.

Basically everything works with the exception of some video card DLL warnings if I run the System Score test in Windows 7, though it does come back with what feels like an appropriate score of 5.9 for this card.

As a follow-up: after doing all of those steps the Catalyst Installer ran successfully. I did however end up having to delete the following files to make some lingering occasional errors go away: 

c:\windows\system32\coinst.dll
c:\windows\system32\atiuxp64.dll 
c:\windows\syswow64\atiumdva.dll 
c:\windows\syswow64\atiumdva.cap
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