DH Mobility Modder.NET-DIY ATI drives for your Notebook

ATI have for many years had their hands tied with laptop manufacturers (OEMS) who request that ATI do not offer support for their device in the Catalyst Driver. This may seem strange, however makers such as Dell may have implemented their own support system and they do not want their customers downloading "reference" drivers from ATI's home page.

Terry Makedon: AMD Manager for Software Product Management Graphics Product Group issued Driver Heaven with the following statement in April of 2007:

"AMD (formerly ATI) introduced the concept of Catalyst Mobility which is a generic driver that works decently for most laptops. The only way we are able to do this is through permission by a laptop manufacturer (OEM) to include their device in the Catalyst Mobility. We were the first company to provide graphics drivers for laptops to the general public, and we believe there is great value in this. At this point we only have permission from a few vendors and I personally wish more of them would let us. My suggestion is you contact your manufacturer and ask them to have your laptop included in Catalyst Mobility. As for Vista specifically we do not have permissions yet, but as soon as we do we look forward to releasing Vista drivers for laptops."

Mobility Modder, the evolution

Unfortunately if you have just spent a few thousand $/£ on a new laptop and you want to keep your graphics drivers updated this leaves you in a bit of a pickle and many people frequently are waiting for their OEM to furnish them with new drivers. Right now the only option is to keep emailing your OEM to request that they update their drivers on a regular basis. However, we all know in real life that this rarely makes a difference.

This is where Driver Heaven comes to the rescue and has done now for years with our FREE Mobility Modder for Windows XP. Over 8,000,000 downloads would suggest that many people wanted the newest ATI drivers on their laptop, with good reason.

With the release of Windows Vista, things have changed, our old mobility modder didn't work correctly as many people on our forums reported, so we have created a new release which is specifically made for VISTA. Currently this has undergone internal testing only so please if you are unsure about running beta software please wait a while until it goes to final build. We would however appreciate feedback on the application in our forums. With your help we can make it better!

The application is recoded in .net framework by the wonderful Ruud Ketelaars (author of the original DriverCleaner (not one of the copycats which are currently riding on the name success of our application) which is natively supported in vista and it is a very compact little program which will install no spyware, malware or anything we could class as dubious. We are enthusiasts just like you guys, so its a simple download with nothing remaining on your system.

Ok, let me have it, how do I use it?:

This is a step by step guide on how to run and use Mobility Modder on Vista AND XP, if you follow these instructions carefully in a step by step manner you will be fine. If you don't then you more than likely will end up with a driver that doesnt correctly work so you have been warned ! (Don't panic, even if you don't mod the driver correctly you won't hose your OS, the driver just won't install (like it did before you came to this page - so pay attention!))

Installation step by step guide

1: Download MSXML 6.0 from Microsoft. (Default in Vista) - Install.

Step 2 is VISTA ONLY

2: Make sure UAC control in Vista is turned off. If you don't know how to do this then read this guide (method 4 is the easiest) or click the "disable UAC" in Mobility Modder.net - please note you MUST reboot after disabling UAC. If you don't want it disabled permanently, you can turn it back on after our mobility tool has finished, but it won't mod the drivers correctly with UAC ON.

3: Download the newest desktop drivers from www.ati.com (or get them from Driver Heaven Downloads). If you are using Windows XP make sure to download .net framework from Microsoft (this is built into Windows Vista so there is no need to install it).

4: Run the downloaded driver, let it extract into c:/ATI/SUPPORT - but cancel the installation once the driver is extracted.

5: Run Mobility Modder - browse to the driver in C:ATI/SUPPORT/ - an example of Catalyst 7.4 would be C:\ATI\SUPPORT\7-4_vista32_dd_ccc_enu_44985 - hit modify. Wait until driver is modified.

6: In Vista, go to C:\ATI\SUPPORT\7-4_vista32_dd_ccc_enu_44985 (Or whatever the driver installation folder was called), and run the SETUP.EXE. Please note you might see a "Driver is not WHQL certified", ignore this, as it is a side effect of the modification.

7: Wait until Install is finished and reboot. Enjoy the new drivers!

HomePage:  http://www.driverheaven.net  

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ATI Catalyst Control Center 8.7available here

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