Inspiron 9100 bluescreens with ATI video driver for ATI

I sent this laptop back to Dell and told them it was a lemon.
They replaced the cpu and heat sink and said it was fixed. I reformatted
and reinstalled xp pro and very carefully started adding one driver at a
time. After installing the ATI Radeon 9700 driver, it started blue
screening again. I do have video without that driver but will it have the
ability to
run some graphics intensive programs like PhotoShop and 3dMax which my
daughter needs for her classes?

I am very aggravated at Dell (I had to threaten them before they would
fulfill on the warranty. I had bought the 3 yr. warranty and accident
warranty as
well so I thought returning it for this problem would be a breeze. But you
would
have thought I was asking Dell for their children).

Now what to do. I frankly don't think they have the ability to fix it.

 

Was the ATI Radeon 9700 driver from Dell or did you download it from the ATI
website? Is it the latest driver available?

 

You are using Dell's driver, right? Dell's OEM cards often require their
driver.

Photoshop isn't very graphics card intensive at all, so it will work. Don't
know about 3DMax.

Tom

 

I had a similar problem on a Latitude. It didn't bluescreen, but after a
fresh XP install, the driver from the Dell site - even though it matched
the service tag and OS - gave me deformed characters and a wierd color
palette. Twice in a row.

Third time, I installed XP but without the "Dell" video driver. Then I let
XP go through it's automatic updates (custom, not express) and selected the
video driver that it found under "optional hardware updates". Problem
solved.

- FM -