Vista - Re: Video card driver permanently lost after automatic update! :(

I used the EXPAND command to extract the .dl_ files and other "*.??_" files,
but there are still missing files when using the .inf from Windows. I guess
there are several files in the .cab file that would need to be extracted
first...

Jon

"Jon Davis" <jon@REMOVE.ME.PLEASE.jondavis.net> wrote in message
news:C230C58D-FB80-43E3-B282-F0E46A979F10@microsoft.com...
> On an Acer Aspire 5050 which has a Radeon Xpress 200M I upgraded a healthy
> configuration of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 to Windows Vista
> Ultimate. Everything has been working fine for the last month, with
> beautiful 3D video, Aero support, Media Center support, game play support,
> etc., until now.
>
> After ATI's Vista update "failed to find any installable components," I
> made
> the idiotic mistake of opening up the Display settings and choosing
> "Search
> automatically for updated driver software". IMO this is a severely broken
> component of Vista but that's not the point of my post here. The automatic
> update UNINSTALLED all of my video card drivers and told me I
> "successfully"
> updated to the "Standard VGA Adapter".
>
> The "Rollback Driver" button is, and always has been, dimmed. I'd try
> rebooting to the "last successful hardware configuration" if it's
> available,
> but I've already rebooted a few times with different attempts to fix this.
>
> I had recently downloaded the Vista RTM drivers from ATI/AMD's web site,
> but
> all Setup does is tell me that there are no compatible components to
> install
> (that was both before and after "updating" to the "Standard VGA Adapter").
> However, the .inf file containing a reference to the Xpress 200 series is
> there. (Actually, three such references are there.)
>
> I tried pointing to this .inf file, but Windows fails to try installing it
> because it "cannot find the required files". There are several DLLs in
> this
> directory where the .inf file was extracted, but their filenames are
> suffixed with ".dl_" rather than ".dll". Does anyone know whether these
> ".dl_" files are compressed, and if so, how they can and should be
> expanded
> for this purpose?
>
> Jon
>