Automatic hardware installation! How annoying!

[Person]

Hello everybody!
I have a question about disabling the automatic hardware installation in Windows XP. The problem is that i just bought a new Dell notebook and the ATI driver on it is outdated, and I would like to install a new one. Being a pain in the butt that it is, it tells me to try to install the new one with a standard VGA driver present. No problem, I go to device menager and uninstall the device. Wohoo! ... Hell NO! After restarting the computer the damn thing reinstalls the stupid card without asking me. I tried to stop the Plug and Play service, but that prevents any device installation from happenning completely!
PLEASE, if anybody knows the answer to my problem, help me kindly!
Thanks!

 

[SHAWN]

Find and delete the inf for the ati card. Its probably in /Windows/INF (the folder is hidden).

 

[Person]

I tried that just now. I removed all the files from that folder, I removed the driver.cab (moved to other location so I don't loose it completely), I did just about anything I could think of. BUT it still installs the damn card! Holy damn, this is really annoying.

 

[SHAWN]

Check add/remove programs and uninstall anything from ATi. It could also be a microsoft driver that is being installed. In which case, youll have to wait until someone else comes in here.

 

[KSoD]

Can also try DriverCleaner. Uninstall the drivers, then do your search, then delete files associates with ATI. That should get rid of them. After all that Reboot (it will probably still find the ATI drivers at this point), run DriverCleaner AGAIN (d**n this is long and not fun), then install the new video drivers. You might not have to go that extreme but that is how i had to do some of my driver installs for Vista. Also do as Shawn stated and check your Add/Remove programs i know nVidia has theirs go there so its easy for an uninstall, not so sure about ATI though.

 

[Person]

I managed to uninstall the driver so it doesn't reinstall again....
But here we go again with ATI being stupid as hell, it still will not let me install the driver even though I'm riding on standard VGA now. Not only that but I can't even reinstall the original driver now, even when I point windows to the original files.

I HOPE YOU BURN IN HELL ATI!
windows hardware installation too, oh, and dell too

Sorry but my frustration has gone beyond the point where I can control myself now.

 

[ShoobieRat]

...:

Okay, so yer driver is out of date and you want to update it? Right?

Have you tried downloading the executable from ATI? I'm assuming you did. What error messages did you get? Let us know the exact messages.

Have you looked for any documentation or white-papers on the driver stating that the card can't be updated? Has ATI provided new firmware updates for the card?

Oh, and I'd be willing to bet that if you contacted Dell/ATI about this, they would tell you EXACTLY why the base driver keeps popping back into place.