ATI Driver Annoyance

[Anti-Trend]

I recently refurbished a machine that is to be used exclusively for multimedia presentation via PowerPoint. I know that’s not the best software for presentation, but my client is married to it. Anyway, the machine is running XP Pro, and is configured to boot into a non-admin user account (because less-than qualified people will be using it). Everything works fine except that when the machine boots, the dual-head ATI video drivers always go through the whole “To enable your TV-out, blah-blah” dialogue. You can check a box that says “Don’t show this again”, but it shows up every time anyways. This is not so in the admin account. I’ve tried elevating the user account’s privileges to admin, but in that case the annoying dialogue simply doesn’t show up at all to be disabled. If all else fails, I can simply inform my client that he will be living with this annoyance, but I’d rather fix it. I can’t find the flag in the registry that is causing this, anyone have any ideas?

 

[Sniper]

have you looked in the startup folder? or tried using msconfig? even better try this and find out what is starting up on startup http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

 

[Anti-Trend]

Thanks for the reply

Well, Windows NTx doesn't have an MSCONFIG, that's an exclusively 9x feature, but I have checked the startup system processes and the auto program launches for each individual profile. Unfortunately, these are clean and it looks like a registry / driver issue. Thanks for the suggestions though. :)

 

[Big B]

Actually, XP does have msconfig, FYI, but anything older than XP does not.

 

[Anti-Trend]

Ahh, thanks, I'm not a big XP fan so I had no idea. But regardless, I have checked that out via the Microsoft Management Console already, and there's nothing auto-launching in any user profile.

 

[Sniper]

try to reinstall the drivers, maybe that could help? isnt there a option to not display that message again? try going throught the setup procedure and see if you find any options?

 

[Anti-Trend]

Yeah, I did reinstall the drivers, but it still does it. The problem is that you can check the box, "Don't show this next time"; it just doesn't make a difference. :(

 

[harrack52]

try installing the omega drivers, the control panel installs by itself and you don't ever see that window you have a problem with if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Anti-Trend]

I do love omega drivers, but that's what I tried first actually. Good advice though.

 

[Anti-Trend]

Alright, I finally fixed the stupid driver problem. It turned out to be a simple and obvious solution. :stupid: After elevating the user account to an admin account, I uninstalled the drivers, rebooted, and reinstalled them under the user account. When it prompted me about the TV display, I disabled the pop-up notification. After rebooting again, I demoted the user account back to a regular client account. No more annoying notifications!