DAAMIT the Catalyst for BSOD

INSTALLING AMD'S LATEST Radeon drivers could result in a Blue Screen of Death and a busted system, AMD has disclosed.

Last week, we reported on the release of the latest update for AMD/ATI's Catalyst drivers, numbered 7.3. Whilst the release claimed to fix many problems for both Windows Vista and XP, it seems that it could have created a rather more major one.

On some systems - and AMD is yet to work out why, diagnostically - installing Catalyst 7.3, then rebooting, can cause a system to hit a BSOD which no amount of rebooting will get rid of.

Whilst attempting to troubleshoot the problem on the DriverHeaven forums, where plenty of ATI users are queueing up to try and give their tuppence worth of technical data, ATI has released the following workaround for users who have found themselves screaming blue, as well as looking at it:

*Start the PC in Safe Mode
*Go to Start > Run
*Run Services.Msc
*Find the ATI External Event Utility Service
*Right click > Properties
*Change it to Startup Type = Disabled
*Apply, then click OK
*Reboot.

If you do that correctly, you should be able to use your computer normally. However, your system won't detect if you plug in or unplug a display whilst Windows is running, since the External Event service that you just disabled is designed to do just that. It seems that this module must be where the problem is, but quite why it would go bonkers, not even ATI knows at the moment.

Plus ça change. µ