Radeon 9250 with Windows 7

When I opened the system's case to check the video card, I found it was an AGP video adapter from ATI Technologies, Inc.. I looked for a model number on the card. I saw "R92LE Ver. 1.2" on the front of the card and "R92L-LL3" on the back. When I searched online for information related to those, it appeared the adapter was an ATI Radeio 9250 video adapter.

I tried to update the video driver through the device manager by having Windows search for an updated driver, but it didn't find one. I couldn't find a driver for Vista or Windows 7 on the manufactuer's website. On the ATI Certified Partner Graphics Cards - TUL Corporation webpage, I saw the following for the ATI Radeon 9200 and 9250 cards:

Chipset	Product Retail Name	Memory	Bus	Connectors
Radeon 9250	Powercolor 9250 GameFX Board Series (R92U) 128MB	128MB	AGP4x,8x	CRT, DVI-I & TV Out
Radeon 9200	PowerColor Radeon 9200 PCI 256MB (R92P-D3L)	256MB	PCI	CRT, DVI-I & TV Out
	Radeon 9200 (R92LE-C3S)	128MB	AGP 8X	CRT, DVI-I & TV Out

When I ran the downloaded

6-11-pre-r300_xp-2k_dd_ccc_wdm_38185.exe

, it created a C:\ATI directory. The installation failed, though.

So I tried installing the driver by right-clicking on Video Controller under Other devices in the Device Manager and then selecting Properties. I then chose to update the driver and browsed to the location on the hard disk where the driver files were placed during the previous installation attempt, i.e. C:\ATI. During this installation attempt, I saw the message "Windows encountered a problem installing the driver software for you device". The device was identified as "RADEON 9250 - Secondary".

When I checked the Device Manager, it appeared that a Radeon 9250 device driver was loaded, though immediately beneath it I saw "RADEON 9250 - Secondary" with a exclamation mark in a yellow triangle.

Second Life still prodiced the same error message as before when I tried to run it, however.

When I checked the driver properties in the Device Manager, I saw the following:

I saw another driver available for download from download drivers at the PowerColor Offical Website, but the version for that driver appeared to be an earlier version, i.e. 8.241 versus 8.252, judging from the file name, which was 8241xp2k.exe, even though the date on it was later, i.e. the date listed was 2007/5/30.

One responder, cdallen, stated "If you intend to use VISTA or Windows 7 GIVE UP ON your ATI 9250 or any other older video cards. they only work right with XP, NT2k, ME Win98-95. it's an issue with the VPU. it's the reason there are no updated drivers." Another responder, Linda Yan, who was a moderator for the foru, stated "According to RADEON 9200 SERIES Specifications, ATI Radeon 9250 does not support Windows Vista and later operating systems. Therefore, you may have to replace your video card to resolve this issue."

I also found people posting about problems getting a Radeon 9250 driver to work under Windows 7 at Radeon 9250 driver ? Can't get this to work on Win 7. In that forum thread, I found a May 10, 2009 posting by regli stating he had found a driver that worked ok.

Just incase you haven't found an answer. Here is my crosspost with a solution for these pesky old ATI Radeon cards:

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Here is my experience that might help some lost souls out there who hit on this forum because they are searching for x86/32bit legacy ATI drivers for Windows 7.

I decided to install Windows 7 RC on some legacy hardware. One a Pentium 4 2.4 using an ABit SR7-8X board with 512MB and an ATI Radeon 8500 graphics card. The other based on an Athlon XP 1600+ on an ASUS A7A266 board with 1.25GB using an ATI Radeon 9250.

As most found out, the Windows 7 install, if via a Vista upgrade or a fresh install will simply ignore the Radeon and install a standard VGA driver that is very slow and limited to 1280*1024 max resolution.

I then decided to install the latest XP ATI Catalyst drivers from AMD (6.11). Though the Catalyst is not supported, the driver install worked without a hitch. I could now set my resolution to 1920*1200 and everything looked fine. The next problem arose when I tried to shut down or reboot. Every single time ATI2dvag crashed just about at the end of the shutdown process with a BSOD. Twice it resulted in a corrupted registry, once unrecoverable necessitating a reinstall.

Back to search for a better solution. I then installed Vista and discovered that Microsoft installed a newer XDDM driver (6.14) as part of the XP upgrade. In Vista, this driver didn't crash the system under any circumstances I tried. As I couldn't find this driver on the net anywhere, I decided to extract it.

It is posted here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/231461174/Vista_ATI_Radeon_XDDM_6.14.10.6606.zip

Download it and you can now install this driver via the device manager/browse my computer for driver software/let me pick from a list. You might need to turn off "show compatible hardware" and then look for the extracted ".inf" file in the display directory.

Once installed, everything works fine for me on both machines. I get a 1.9 score for both cards on the Aero performance scale but a 1.0 for gaming graphics. My guess is that it doesn't even test the gaming score as it reports in the detailed performance information no dedicated graphics memory despite the fact that both of these cards have it.

I didn't test any games but ran DVD quality videos from the hard disk using Kmplayer and Media Player. Though Kmplayer clearly performed better, both of them did a good job. A few artifacts were visible in fast moving scenes but otherwise it was very watchable in 1920 * 1200 full screen mode.

This exercise demonstrates that Windows 7 works very nicely and MUCH better than Vista with legacy hardware, in fact with very old hardware. It also points out that systems with onboard chips or graphics cards based on the 7 series, 8 series or 9 series ATI Radeons are not a lost cause for Windows 7.

There is also a driver, ATI Radeon 9250 AGP Driver Download from DriverGuide.com, but you need to join to download the driver. I don't know the version for that one. I also searched The guru of 3D site for Radeon 9250 downloads, but didn't find anything that looked promising.

However, after I rebooted the system Second Life then worked, so I didn't make any further changes.

Driver Provider:	ATI Technologies Inc.
Driver Date:	5/3/2006
Driver Version:	8.252.0.0

Product Name	Chipset	Catalyst	Version	OS Compatibility	Update	Download
9250 128MB64BIT_c6.4	PowerColor Radeon 7000/9250 series Display Driver	6.4		WinXP/ 2000	2007/5/30	Download 1 Download 2 Download 3
9250 256MB128Bit_6.4	PowerColor Radeon 7000/9250 series Display Driver	6.4		WinXP/ 2000	2007/5/30	Download 1 Download 2 Download 3