How retarted it is that Win7 setup still doesn't provide...

OH MY GOSH! I just tried installing Win7 beta on my PC and just like it happened with Vista the install was crashing all the time due to the infamous 3-years-old-and-still-unfixed ATI TDR bug and there were no ways to install Win7 other than opening the PC case and swapping my Radeon with a GeForce during the install in order to apply the TRD fix (running MSCONFIG and setting the # of CPU cores and max ram in the boot options) later when windows had installed.

WHY the hell the Windows setup still doesn't provide an easy way to avoid installing/loading any 3rd party driver during the install? What if I was using a laptop and could not replace the videocard?

Can somebody please ask the dev team to add an option that tells the windows setup to install only generic safe-mode drivers avoiding those poorly written OEM drivers making the Win7 install impossible? Many people would thank them for that.

--Jack

Ion Todirel said:

report it as a bug, it's good that you posted about it here, but if you want someone to take care of it, post it on connect...

I wish I could but I am participating only in the public beta, I didn't apply for the private beta on connect. I can use only the pretty useless send feedback tool whose reports are most likely dumped to > nul.

Interesting. I have an ATI Radeon HD3850 and have never even heard of this bug, let alone experienced it. Is it specific to certain model cards?

Sven Groot said:

Interesting. I have an ATI Radeon HD3850 and have never even heard of this bug, let alone experienced it. Is it specific to certain model cards?

The TDR bug is quite widespread and mostly happens on assembled computers with multicore CPUs, 4gb or more of RAM on multiple RAM sticks and Vista x64. There are plenty of posts on the AMD forums about the issue (virtually any atikmdag crash could be related to that bug) but they don't seem to care, they prefer putting useless PUMA stickers on hardware where their drivers don't even work, like my HP dv7z where I can't put any ATI catalyst newer than 8.9 or else resume from standby would stop working. Gotta love this company.

OnlyJack said:

Sven Groot said:

*snip*

The TDR bug is quite widespread and mostly happens on assembled computers with multicore CPUs, 4gb or more of RAM on multiple RAM sticks and Vista x64. There are plenty of posts on the AMD forums about the issue (virtually any atikmdag crash could be related to that bug) but they don't seem to care, they prefer putting useless PUMA stickers on hardware where their drivers don't even work, like my HP dv7z where I can't put any ATI catalyst newer than 8.9 or else resume from standby would stop working. Gotta love this company.

Ok, I have 4GB RAM on 2 sticks, a multicore CPU, and Vista x64 (and now Win7 x64), and I still haven't experienced this bug. Guess I'm just lucky.

OnlyJack said:

Ion Todirel said:

*snip*

I wish I could but I am participating only in the public beta, I didn't apply for the private beta on connect. I can use only the pretty useless send feedback tool whose reports are most likely dumped to > nul.

I think there are some people here who can report this for you ??

But, if it's widespread. then perhaps it's already been reported.

elmer said:

OnlyJack said:

*snip*

I think there are some people here who can report this for you ??

But, if it's widespread. then perhaps it's already been reported.

The driver crash has certainly been already reported by other people - I, too, installed the drivers without applying the fix first so that I could get a couple of error reports to send - however nobody guarantees that it's going to be fixed by ATI considering the same bug has been plaguing Vista users since Vista's launch.

Not all the hardware manufacturers release "floppy" versions of their drivers that can be installed during the Windows setup so the only way to get the setup to work other than swapping the hardware would be to use nlite/vlite to remove the drivers or a WIM image made on a virtual machine on another PC and that's a very big waste of time.

If the Windows setup had a checkbox (or even an hidden keyboard shortcut if the devs don't want to make the setup GUI any harder to understand) to disable loading of all third-party drivers then having successful setups even in presence of broken OEM drivers that require updates or weird mumbo jumbos to work would be much easier.

Sven Groot said:

OnlyJack said:

*snip*

Ok, I have 4GB RAM on 2 sticks, a multicore CPU, and Vista x64 (and now Win7 x64), and I still haven't experienced this bug. Guess I'm just lucky.

Same, running two systems that have 4GIG of ram, modern multicore intel cpu and a 3650 / 4870 and haven't had this problem with vista nor 7's setup.. there must be something else to it. I did however find that my p35 mobo could quite happily screw up 1TB harddrives by telling them (yes actually telling the drive so it thinks this forever unless i purposely reset it), that their storage size is in fact 31.5mb.. turns out thats pretty well known also, just needed to update my bios.

OnlyJack said:

Sven Groot said:

*snip*

The TDR bug is quite widespread and mostly happens on assembled computers with multicore CPUs, 4gb or more of RAM on multiple RAM sticks and Vista x64. There are plenty of posts on the AMD forums about the issue (virtually any atikmdag crash could be related to that bug) but they don't seem to care, they prefer putting useless PUMA stickers on hardware where their drivers don't even work, like my HP dv7z where I can't put any ATI catalyst newer than 8.9 or else resume from standby would stop working. Gotta love this company.

I have 6GB on 4 sticks, a Core 2 Duo, 965P chipset, and an HD3850 (before that an X1900GT) and have never had this problem on Vista or Win7. 

spivonious said:

OnlyJack said:

*snip*

I have 6GB on 4 sticks, a Core 2 Duo, 965P chipset, and an HD3850 (before that an X1900GT) and have never had this problem on Vista or Win7. 

I've never had cancer, therefore it doesn't exist.

phreaks said:

spivonious said:

*snip*

I've never had cancer, therefore it doesn't exist.

I don't think any of us are saying it doesn't exist. It simply appears there is another component necessary for this bug to occur that we don't yet know about.

phreaks said:

spivonious said:

*snip*

I've never had cancer, therefore it doesn't exist.

Surely it would make more sense to ensure that in-box drivers work without crashing, rather than provide some convoluted method of installing? If the ATi driver doesn't cut the mustard, keep it off the disc altogether. Then they might actually get their act together and fix it.

I made a post in one of the Windows 7 newsgroups on Connect, pointing to this thread. Hopefully someone who knows what to do about it will see it.

Sven Groot said:

I made a post in one of the Windows 7 newsgroups on Connect, pointing to this thread. Hopefully someone who knows what to do about it will see it.

I hope so, though it's hard to take seriously a bug report that starts with the word "retarded". And misspelled at that.

phreaks said:

spivonious said:

*snip*

I've never had cancer, therefore it doesn't exist.

All I'm saying is that what he stated as the cause of the bug can't be the cause, since I've had two different ATI cards and haven't experienced it.

Maybe it's yet another nVidia chipset problem?

Have you tried updating your BIOS?

Sven Groot said:

phreaks said:

*snip*

I don't think any of us are saying it doesn't exist. It simply appears there is another component necessary for this bug to occur that we don't yet know about.

Certainly, apparently there is no empirical data to support the claim.

Quantitative vs Analytical processes are fundamentally different, but we draw conclusions from both.