ATI Drivers not installing correctly due to missing INF file...

[earwicker7]

I ran drivercleaner on my PC; I had just finished wrapping up my overclock for my HD5970, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to reinstall the drivers since there were a lot of crashes while I was looking for a stable overclock. I followed the directions, and everything seemed to work fine until I ran the file to install the drivers. During this process, I get an error message that the driver INF file is missing. When I installed the drivers before, I used the exact same download (I just kept it in my download folder), and it worked just fine. I'm assuming drivercleaner deleted or changed something, and I need to know how to fix it. Thanks!

 

[MindoverMaster]

Did you follow the directions for driversweeper correctly? A link to my guide is in my sig.

You have to uninstall the software, restart in to safe mode, remove the drivers, and restart in normal mode.

 

[earwicker7]

I'm using drivercleaner, not driversweeper.

 

[MindoverMaster]

my mistake. You might want to try driversweeper, too.

 

[earwicker7]

It looks like there are a lot of people complaining about drivercleaner doing this to their computers.

 

[Slaymate]

I haven't used drivercleaner in a while, I like driversweeper better. Have you tried re-downloading the driver?

 

[earwicker7]

I haven't used drivercleaner in a while, I like driversweeper better. Have you tried re-downloading the driver?

No, but I will when I get home. Some of the other options I've seen from researching this are to try manually installing the drivers from the control panel, using the repair function on the windows OS disk, and a couple of other things I can't remember off the top of my head. The thing that really sucks is that I started to make a system image yesterday, but it said that it was user aborted, so I think my cat must have jumped on the keyboard, and I just decided to put it off until today

 

[Slaymate]

Both Drivercleaner and DriverSweeper are suppose to delete all the files, including .inf files, that are located in Windows.

DriverSweeper, however, doesn't delete the original download or installation files. It's been a while since I've used Drivercleaner but I think I quit using it because it was always deleting my downloaded installation files.

Exactly what .inf file is being reported as missing?

 

[earwicker7]

So, here's the update. After doing numerous backflips, I was able to get the drivers to install, but it seems like something is still missing, because whenever I use the ATI drivers (I have no problems when I'm using the generic VGA drivers in Windows) I get a BSOD within about 20 seconds of logging in. That 20 seconds point is usually right about the point where MSI Afterburner would kick in, but I have disabled it in the startup menu, so I am pretty sure that isn't it. I've seen two different BSOD messages; the first time, I got "A clodk interval was not received on a secondary processor..." (the machine rebooted before I could write down the rest of the message), and the other time I got a "Machine_Check_Exception". So, basically, unless there is one huge coincidence, drivercleaner has killed my OS. Unless anyone has some ideas, I'm just going to do a clean install.

 

[earwicker7]

I think I was correct about the MSI Afterburner... I uninstalled it, and no more BSOD, so Drivercleaner must have somehow affected it too. I'll reinstall and go from there.