How to solve driver support problems especially when you run Windows 10 on older hardware architecture – on an example with ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 video card driver

In the above mentioned scenario you might be faced with various driver incompatibility problems due to producers’ lack of support which does not mean that your hardware is not Windows 10 capable (if you are aware of what you have on board), but mainly to unsupported drivers for the new OS. Windows 10 upon installation will install its own, usually basic drivers and guard them like a dog not allowing any modifications. In my case it was the unsupported driver for my ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 video card (not a new one, for sure, but under Omega drivers it has allowed me to play Mass Effect 3 with all settings maxed out; the original ATI drivers did not allow me even to play Mass Effect 1). Anyway, the basic Microsoft Display Adapter driver did could not recognize my hardware properly and I was stuck with lower screen resolution (1024 x 768) instead of the native one, which is 1280 x 800.

But after toilsome hours of various unsuccessful experiments and trying out a number of different approaches, I finally managed to find a working solution and now I am writing this enjoying my native screen resolution again.

As I believe there might be some people out there having similar problems that are driving them nuts, I’d like to share her in detail what action steps brought me to the successful final solution.

In my case it was a problem with the video card driver, but I believe you can try my solution with any other hardware driver you find in the catalog I mention below.

1. Go to Microsoft’s update catalog service: http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/ (important: you need Internet Explorer for that task and let IE install an add-on to be able to use the service, you will be prompted to do so.)

2. In the search field type the driver you need, in my case it was “Mobility Radeon x1600”. I later found out that WDDM driver had to be used, the one which was signed: “ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM)”

3. Download the package. If you don’t have any file archiver in your system, download 7-zip or some similar software and install it.

4. Extract the downloaded package to a folder and you are ready for driver installation.

Now the fun begins as we are getting to banish the forced MS basic Display Adapter driver.

5. Press Windows key (keep it pressed) and c key, press the down arrow twice and slide down to “settings” and hit enter twice - this will get you to the control panel (choose small icons) and open the Device Manager. Go to Action tab and select “Add legacy hardware” (pictures 1-2). Click on any device first to have something selected there, otherwise the action button will have only help option available. Add Hardware wizard will pop up (picture 3).

6.  Click next and choose “Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced)” (picture 4).

7. Select the device you want to upgrade with the driver, in my case it was the Display Adapter (picture 5) and hit next.

8. In the new window select the device driver you want to install for the hardware, in my case it was the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter I wanted to replace (picture 6).

9. Click “have disk” => “browse” and navigate to the downloaded MS folder with drivers, the one that you have extracted with 7-z archiver, select the file with .inf extension, hit “open” => “OK” (pictures 7-11).

10. A list will show with drivers in the downloaded and extracted package. Navigate to the driver compatible with the hardware that you have, in case of my video card it was Radeon X1600 series (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM) and hit next to proceed with the installation (pictures 12-13).

11. Finish the installation process (pictures 14-16) and victory!

I only don’t know why I had two instances of the video card installed in my system so I simply uninstalled the one with the error symbol.

In the package I found the drivers for the video cards I am listing below, so if you happen to have any of them, this solution should work for you. Here is the list:

MOBILITY/RADEON X700, RADEON X850 CrossFire Edition, ATI MOBILITY FIRE GL, ATI MOBILITY FireGL, ATI MOBILITY FireGL V5200, MOBILITY RADEON X600, RADEON XPRESS 200M Series, MOBILITY RADEON 9600/9700, ATI FireGL V3300, ATI FireGL V3300 , ATI FireGL V3400 , ATI FireGL V3400, ATI FireGL V5200, ATI FireGL V5200, ATI FireGL V7200, ATI FireGL V7200, ATI FireGL V7300, ATI FireGL V7300, ATI FireGL V7350, ATI FireGL V7350, ATI FireMV 2400, ATI FireMV 2400, ATI MOBILITY FireGL V5200, ATI MOBILITY FireGL V7100, ATI MOBILITY FireGL V7200, ATI Mobility Radeon X1300, ATI Mobility Radeon X1300, ATI Mobility Radeon X1300, ATI Mobility Radeon X1300, ATI Mobility Radeon X1350, ATI Mobility Radeon X1350, ATI Mobility Radeon X1350, ATI Mobility Radeon X1400, ATI Mobility Radeon X1450, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600, ATI Mobility Radeon X1800, ATI Mobility Radeon X1800 XT, FireGL T2, FireGL V3100, FireGL V3200, FireGL V5000, FireGL V5100, FireGL V7100, FireGL X1, FireGL X2-256/X2-256t, FireGL X3-256, FireGL Z1, FireMV 2200, M52, M56, MOBILITY FIRE GL T2/T2e, MOBILITY FireGL V3100, MOBILITY FireGL V3200, MOBILITY FireGL V5000,  MOBILITY FireGL V5100, MOBILITY RADEON 9500, MOBILITY RADEON 9550, MOBILITY RADEON 9600/9700, MOBILITY RADEON 9800, MOBILITY RADEON X300, MOBILITY RADEON X600, MOBILITY RADEON X700, MOBILITY RADEON X700 XL, MOBILITY RADEON X800, MOBILITY RADEON X800 XT,  R430 XTP, R480 Consumer 4P, RADEON 9500, RADEON 9500 PRO / 9700, RADEON 9550, RADEON 9600 Series, RADEON 9600 TX, RADEON 9650, RADEON 9700 PRO, RADEON 9800 PRO, RADEON 9800 SE, RADEON 9800 SERIES, RADEON 9800 SERIES SEC, RADEON 9800 XT, Radeon X1300 PRO, Radeon X1300, Radeon X1300 Series Sec, Radeon X1600 Series, Radeon X1800, Radeon X1900, RADEON X300/X550, RADEON X550, RADEON X600, RADEON X600/X550, RADEON X700, RADEON X700 PRO,  RADEON X700 SE, RADEON X700 XT Series, RADEON X700 XT Series Sec, RADEON X700/X550 Series,  RADEON X700/X550 Series Sec, RADEON X800, RADEON X800 GT, RADEON X800 GTO, RADEON X800 PRO, RADEON X800 SE, RADEON X800 Series, RADEON X800 VE, RADEON X800 XL, RADEON X800 XT,  RADEON X800 XT Platinum Ed, RADEON X800 XT Platinum Ed Sec, RADEON X850 PRO, RADEON X850 SE, RADEON X850 XT, RADEON X850 XT Platinum Ed, Radeon Xpress 1300, Radeon Xpress 1300M, RADEON XPRESS 200 Series, RADEON XPRESS 200 Series Sec, RADEON XPRESS 200M Series, RV370X, RV371, RV505, RV530 LE, RV530 SE, RV530 VE, ATI Mobility Radeon X1700, ATI MOBILITY FireGL V5250.

I tried this several times with no less than 5 drivers I downloaded from the link provided and each time, I do not got a list of adapters to choose from. The procedure goes swimmingly and I point it right at the drivers folder but no hardware appears to choose from. Twice I was given an error that the location does not contain a driver but several times - nothing appears in the list.

Windows 10 will be useless to me if I cannot have my ATI Radeon Mobility X1400 installed correctly.

Download the Vista drivers and install them in compabilty mode "Vista" and as an administrator (right click and choose compabilitytab on the setup file for settings mentioned).

This works for me with my old ATI x1600 in Windows 7, 8.0 and 8.1.

I assume this works in Windows 10 to.

Download the Vista drivers and install them in compabilty mode "Vista" and as an administrator (right click and choose compabilitytab on the setup file for settings mentioned).

This works for me with my old ATI x1600 in Windows 7, 8.0 and 8.1.

I assume this works in Windows 10 to.

That would not be correct.

Every attempt I make to force feed it a driver fails. I can choose the ATI Radeon Mobility X1400 driver and the install will begin but stops a moment later with an error message that the software is not compatible with the OS.

I went through a similar issue getting an ATI Radeon Mobility X1400 driver installed on this laptop when I upgraded to Windows 7. The laptop originally came with Windows XP.

I sure hope the final release of Windows 10 includes a compatible driver for the ATI Radeon Mobility X1400 or else I won't be upgrading, obviously.

Hi Yacinthus

Thanks for this great steps.  Most of the steps worked for me.  I have been looking for my notebook display Radeon X300 for few days and the download worked for me.

at first i went through all your steps but i could not find Microsoft Basic Display.

So instead i updated the driver and pointing it toward the folder where i unzipped the downloaded files.  Windows then performed the installations with the Radeon X300 driver.

Hi Sam_R,

I am happy to hear it worked for you. In the Device Manager, under display adapters (= your currently installed video cards or graphics cards, whatever you call them) I had Microsoft Basic Display, which was the Win 10 bundled (I guess) driver that had overridden my original Radeon X1600 driver upon Windows 10 installation. The name "Microsoft Basic Driver" in case of other machines might differ as some other driver might have got installed, though I believe that whenever Windows cannot identify correctly your video card it will install some sort of MS basic driver to handle your display. Anyway, the idea is that whenever you experience a downgrade in your display experience after installation of the MS Windows 10, due to the improper recognition of your original driver, just follow the steps to replace it with the proper one, in the Device Manager under Display adapters (whatever the name it has, not corresponding to your original one, in my case that name was Microsoft Basic Display).

Same here !

I assume ? W10 will accept my Ati Mobility Radeon x1600 after initial updates, maybe its just a matter of waiting for the relevant drivers?

AMD/MS need to sort this out !

Just to add = I use a Toshiba Laptop, ok its several years old (W7) but to be honest its a good un !

I am not prepared to rush into a purchase, just to use W10, AMD are meant to be pro active with MS, time will tell. There will be issues, of course there will, so far some upgrades have failed which was to be expected on the first day !

That said, I thought there were capability studies under taken by MS so there were going to be no issues for the W10 upgrade.

I,ve noticed prices are falling rapidly on older laptops with previous OS. It could be prudent to wait a while to see if any bargains are available ?

Good News !!!

I,ve found a driver that supports W10,

Driver Provider        ATI 

Driver Date             24-Nov-06

Driver Version         8.31.100.32

Resolution has now returned to 1280 x 800

Everything works just fine, so it begs the question,

"Why can't AMD provide a link/update ?"

Notebook prices are going down indeed, so if you have a budget for a new one, perhaps the best idea would be to wait a little and buy one with Win 10 OS. However if you are tight with your budget I do recommend getting a refurbished HP EliteBook 8440p with i7 processor and NVIDIA NVS 3100M graphics preferably, they ship with Windows 7 Pro (I suggest the 64-bit version) and cost plus 200 USD. Then upgrade Windows 7 to Windows 10 and you're set with a machine that's build like a brick, has a good CPU, 14-inch display (so the machine is quite portable, if you care about that) and modern looks on the outside.

BDW you mentioned Toshiba - I personally did really enjoy my Toshiba Tecra (which is now a ten-year old machine). It worked without a glitch for all that time, almost constantly on, its mainboard started failing recently. I upgraded the HDD and CPU in it, but not because the processor had failed, I simply wanted a more powerful piece.

In the mentioned HP EliteBook go for the higher 1600x900 screen resolution instead of the lower 1366 x 768, if you have no eye problems. Having 900 vertical pixels instead of 768 can allow you to see more text or an extra paragraph while reading, without scrolling. And when you’re not scrolling all day, you have the comfort to read more and get more work done.

At least it told you there is a problem with your X1600.  My Fujitsu upgraded with no complaints and broke the video driver, the fingerprint driver and Intel Wireless 6205 (that I was using during the install).

What a joke!  I guess they didn't feel the need to do any compatibility checks.

This article was a big help in that it pointed me to the correct (WDDM) video driver.  It wasn't nearly as complicated as all the steps here though.  I just updated the driver from the MS generic one by selecting the driver from a list instead of letting Windows search.

Thanks!

First off, thanks for taking the time and effort to post all that up, was a great help to find all this even if it didn't work using your method.

For some reason (using a Mobility Radeon X800) I couldn't install using the advanced method you have posted but it would the 'easy' way.

Basically, from screenshot 1:

1. Right click the Microsoft Basic Display Adaptor
2. Select 'Update Driver'
3. Navigate to your extracted atiilhag.inf file
4. OK
5. That's it, job done, screen flickers a bit but I ended up back at a nice 1900x1200 display rather than 1600x1200 :)

A few other pointers:

• You can extract the files inside the CAB folder just by right clicking and selecting a location, I just extracted them to the outer folder.
• You have to extract ALL the files, not just the .inf file.
• Make sure you have the right drivers for your processor/OS architecture. The 4mb file is for x64 and the 2mb is is for x86.
• If you're having bother getting Microsoft to accept your antiquated specs just force the update by running windows update from the command line in administrator mode. Worked first time for me. See here.