Unable to uninstall ATI drivers

[Synful Serenity]

Right now, my 9800 np -> pro has been on the fritz...There are weird random patterns and screen corruption that occurs intermittently, which may be a hardware problem due to the OCing with the card 1 year old. However, the catalyst drivers are long outdated, and so I thought it would be time to install the latest driver, and also rule out driver problems with the screen corruption.

Every time I uninstall the drivers, in either add/remove programs, or in device manager, as soon as the computer boots up again, Windows XP SP1 automatically reinstalls the old drivers again "for" me. Gee, thanks Windows. I am not given any opportunity to cancel this. I have tried deleting all .inf files relating to ATI, deleting the drivers themselves from system32, but somehow, Windows knows.

This is the first time I've experienced this. I've upgraded Catalyst drivers many times before, and each time the card goes back to "Default VGA Adapter" after uninstalling the drivers, not the old Radeon drivers like now. Anyone know why this is happening or how to stop it?

 

[OPUS1]

Don't know about ATI, but

Try removing through the add remove
then boot into safe mode and run Driver Cleaner 3

Good Luck !

 

[Synful Serenity]

Thanks a lot, I had forgotten about Driver Cleaner...Also, I had forgotten to delete the oemXX.inf files mentioning ATI from \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32, as well as disabling my network connection. It wasn't until I disabled the connection that I was able to uninstall the drivers and not have them reinstall again, as Windows was automatically supplying the .inf info from over the net....another XP "feature" that turned out to be a $#*%!@ pain in the ass.

Of course, then the Catalyst Control Center wasn't loading, until I discovered you had to have Microsoft .NET installed...So far, no more 2d "card death" glitches....Everyone, remember to disable your connection to the Internet when uninstalling drivers!