I recently installed Windows XP Professional over the TOP of an existing edition of XP Home. However, since the installation completed, I've been getting an error message relating to the video card, which is an ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 (installed in an Advent 7039 laptop).

When the PC boots up I get the following error message:

Warning: The ATI Control Panel failed to initialize because no ATI driver is installed, or ATI driver is not working properly. The ATI Control Panel will now exit.

I've been to the ATI site (www.ati.com) and have downloaded the latest ATI disply driver, but when I attempted to install it I got another error message (as follows).

Severe: Setup was unable to complete the installation. Try to setup your display adapter with a standard VGA driver before running setup.

I'm able to read the laptop screen so some sort of display driver must be running, although the PC now seems to run very slowly (and videos don't run smoothly anymore), so it's unlikely that the ATI graphics card is working. In fact I can no longer see the card listed in the PC's hardware profile.

Any ideas what I can do to sort this out? I've TRIED to "search for new hardware" but that doesn't FIND the card. I'm a real novice at this sort of stuff so don't know where to start.I ran into this just yestderday with a Gateway system. First thing to do is delete ALL drivers if listed and uninstall the software. Reboot the machine and when it loads and asks you if you want to install PCI video adapter or anything else, say cancel.

WHen the machine is up and running with a poor 16 color display go into add new hardware and don't let it search. pick Display adapter and then choose the first option GIVEN in left side of the the box you get. and install that, choosing PCI VGA adapter on the right portion of that box.

Reboot the machine and install the appropriate ATI driver.

Let us know how it goes.