Note- 4850 CROSSFIRE AND CERTAIN SETUPS DO NOT WORK WITH 8.10 (HOTFIXED)/8.11

[Drizzt5]

Found a fix that should also work for 8.12 (if its like the 8.12 betas, the issue isnt fixed).

Works for anyone yet?

And what do you mean you have to reboot to turn crossfire on and off?

 

[James1991]

Works for anyone yet?

And what do you mean you have to reboot to turn crossfire on and off?

i would tell you if i could get 8.11 uninstalled without catalyst installl manager having errors saying it stopped working. i am almost ready to snap these cards in half and for the first time in my life do what i was planning never to do. switch to nvidia:shadedshu

sometimes crossfire doesn't work properly when you enable it before you reboot. rebooting is better than BSOD though

 

[Tatty_Two]

Mines working again (8.11, no success with 8.12 beta) To be honest, I dont know what did it, I did so much different cr*p for 3 hours with both hardware and software, I flashed back to the origional upper limits and that did not appear to make any difference but eventually it got there, funny thing is that even though I enable all in the installation, for some reason it does not install CCC, which is good for me cause I hate the damn thing, I am useing the new ATi tray tools do do all my settings including enabling Xfire and all the 3D tweaks, downside is I am back to 735 max no matter what i do but I might re-flash them tomorrow night with the 800 upper limit and if I lose them again at least i will know it was that.

Damn that was hard work.........:shadedshu

 

[graved1gger]

Found a fix that should also work for 8.12 (if its like the 8.12 betas, the issue isnt fixed).

I've tried it... crossfire doesn't work at all... tried reboots, enabling and disabling cf - nothing...

I even don't know what other shaman dances I must perform to get this thing working

going back to 8.10...

 

[trickson]

I've tried it... crossfire doesn't work at all... tried reboots, enabling and disabling cf - nothing...

I even don't know what other shaman dances I must perform to get this thing working

going back to 8.10...

Have you tried unistalling all the ATI drivers using driver sweeper then reinstalling them ?

 

[Flak]

I got home today, downloaded the 8.12 and decided to install them first with both cards in the pc. Uninstalled 8.11, booted into safe mode and ran drive sweeper, rebooted and installed 8.12. Reboot when that was done and when it is trying to load Vista 64bit it errors out to the windows boot manager screen saying that File: \Windows\system32\config\system is missing or corrupt... Please reinstall your OS or run a repair.

 

[trickson]

I got home today, downloaded the 8.12 and decided to install them first with both cards in the pc. Uninstalled 8.11, booted into safe mode and ran drive sweeper, rebooted and installed 8.12. Reboot when that was done and when it is trying to load Vista 64bit it errors out to the windows boot manager screen saying that File: \Windows\system32\config\system is missing or corrupt... Please reinstall your OS or run a repair.

OOOHHHH man that is not cool ! Did you manage to fix it ?

 

[Drizzt5]

I got home today, downloaded the 8.12 and decided to install them first with both cards in the pc. Uninstalled 8.11, booted into safe mode and ran drive sweeper, rebooted and installed 8.12. Reboot when that was done and when it is trying to load Vista 64bit it errors out to the windows boot manager screen saying that File: \Windows\system32\config\system is missing or corrupt... Please reinstall your OS or run a repair.

Try repairing it, hopefully it will all turn out alright.

I think something similar happened to me the first time I installed Crossfire in my system when this whole mess started.

I'm just going to stick with older drivers until a solution is found. I hear you on the shaman dances... I am sick of trying every little thing to get these things to work and all the suggestions I tried didn't work so I'm just sticking with what I got now.

And as far as switching to nvidia.... well.... my 8800gt sli was pretty bad and hard to setup but at least it worked with new drivers :shadedshu

 

[trickson]

SLI FTW ! I hope you get that fixed man that sucks !

 

[Tatty_Two]

Just did a 2006 run to really make sure she is running in Xfire...............

 

[Flak]

I'm just going to do a clean install of Vista 64bit, figure I was due for it anyways. LoL.

 

[trickson]

I'm just going to do a clean install of Vista 64bit, figure I was due for it anyways. LoL.

I hope it all works good for this time !

 

[James1991]

i have 8.12 working

a couple registry tweaks, no driver sweeper, no safe mode, 1 BSOD, 2 restarts and now it's working

ATI

 

[Tatty_Two]

i have 8.12 working

a couple registry tweaks, no driver sweeper, no safe mode, 1 BSOD, 2 restarts and now it's working

ATI

Excellent news.....and are your cards modded with a BIOS flash as a matter of interest?

 

[James1991]

Excellent news.....and are your cards modded with a BIOS flash as a matter of interest?

not at the moment, they will be again soon though

 

[philbrown23]

i have not ever had this issued 4850 crossfire, asus P45, vista ultimate 64 bit. i no longer have the setup but was using the 8.11 cats with never a bsod.

 

[Tatty_Two]

There are a couple of things I cannot quite grasp/understand, maybe some of you can shed some light....... Why is it, with a single card I can disable overdrive in CCC and clock the card in either ATI Tray tools or Rivatuner to beyond the overdrive upper limit, but in CF, no matter what I do, the upper limit (written into the driver is invoked and I cannot go beyond the limit? Any idea's, as I said, mine is working fine now in CF but on the origional BIOS, it's taken me so long to get these damn things going, I am loath to re-flash with the higher CCC limits as to mess the setup again, as soon as I seem to take the one card out to flash the other and vice versa, that seems to trigger the issues in CF when I finally re-boot again with both cards in with the modded BIOSes on them.

I am more than happy to game in CF at 735 but most of us like the odd bench or two, knowing these cards individually can do around 800mhz can be frustrating when you can only bench at 735

 

[ShogoXT]

My posted method on page 2 works btw. If you know how to disable startup services it works fine.

 

[Tatty_Two]

My posted method on page 2 works btw. If you know how to disable startup services it works fine.

I know, I used "some" of your tips in the lengthy process to get mine running, just reluctant to mess it all up again (potentially) by reflashing the cards.

 

[Flak]

My system is back up, and I have always used modified bios's. Had to change it after 8.7 when they added bios checks to the driver install. Currently using modified bios with clocks @ default, voltages increased to 1.15 on 3d and decreased to .99 on 2d, and fan speed ramping changed. Using the CCC profile from a gainward golden sample, and then I use CCC to overclock.

To get Vista to boot to desktop after install 8.12 with both cards installed I had to boot to safe mode after the install and disable the second card. Reboot and let it successfully load into Vista, it noticed the single card fine. Then went back into device manager and uninstalled (kept drivers) the card that was disabled. Rebooted and was then successfully into Vista with crossfire enabled.

 

[Booj]

Found a fix that should also work for 8.12 (if its like the 8.12 betas, the issue isnt fixed).

Thanks ShogoXT, your suggestion to disable the ATI external event service was the key to getting my 4850 crossfire working with vista64 and Cat 8.12.

Here was my method. Starting fresh with a single card

1. Fresh install of Vista64 with integrated SP1 and updates to Oct 08
2. Install latest chipset drivers
3. Install latest .NET 3.5 (57mb download :shadedshu)
4. Install full cat 8.12 suite. Restart, then power off and install the second card WITHOUT the bridge installed.
4. Restored stock BIOS to both cards, both are reference cards, and I used the same BIOS for both. From the TPU database.
5. Restarted WITH the crossfire bridge. Both cards were recognized, but enabling CF still gave a BSOD.
6. Tried your trick of disabling the ATI external event service via safe mode, and now crossfire is working without problems. That was the one that finally got it to work Thank You!

 

[Drizzt5]

Thanks ShogoXT, your suggestion to disable the ATI external event service was the key to getting my 4850 crossfire working with vista64 and Cat 8.12.

Here was my method. Starting fresh with a single card

1. Fresh install of Vista64 with integrated SP1 and updates to Oct 08
2. Install latest chipset drivers
3. Install latest .NET 3.5 (57mb download :shadedshu)
4. Install full cat 8.12 suite. Restart, then power off and install the second card WITHOUT the bridge installed.
4. Restored stock BIOS to both cards, both are reference cards, and I used the same BIOS for both. From the TPU database.
5. Restarted WITH the crossfire bridge. Both cards were recognized, but enabling CF still gave a BSOD.
6. Tried your trick of disabling the ATI external event service via safe mode, and now crossfire is working without problems. That was the one that finally got it to work Thank You!

Ill give it a try later, but I'm not reinstalling vista. I'll just clear up the drivers I have now.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Well after re-flashing my cards I lost Crossfire again I have tried all methods including ALL those shown in this thread and after a weekend of heartache.....still nothing, and I am on Vista32, these cards are going back mefinks.....had enuff, little point in ATi saying that Crossfire scales better than SLi (actually not the case any more since 200 series) but it counts for cr*p if they dont work in the first place.

 

[Wile E]

Send them to me Tatty. I'll fight with them. lol.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Send them to me Tatty. I'll fight with them. lol.

Well I have just the one in ATM, I am defeated for the time being, might have another go at the weekend, what surprises me though is how smooth COD World at war runs on just one of these cards at 1920 x 1200, albeit I know the card has 1GB of memory and I run the game for long bursts at 790mhz, I guess at that speed it's as fast (ish) as a 4870.

When Xfire was working, at just 735mhz my 2006 scores are only marginally less than Xfired 4870's.

I even tried the Cat 8.7 drivers that everyone says was the last problem free driver set with crossfire but same error messages and BSOD, maybe these drivers dont like cards with flashed BIOSes that raise the upper limits?....be nice to hear from someone else who has got theirs working if they can keep it working with a flash.

You never know, you might get a belated Christmas present!