You’re working away on your computer and all of a sudden you get a blue screen telling you the problem is an ATI2DVAG infinite loop issue, could be hardware but most likely software. You freak out because you have always heard of the “blue screen of death”. NOT AS BAD AS YOU THINK. I went through this. Here is what happened and how you can fix it. One thing is for sure – you have an ATI video card and driver in your computer.
The issue could be that somehow your computer improperly loaded a driver (software) so that it has two versions of the same driver. Therefore, as the system sends a signal to display images it goes into an infinite loop from one driver to the other and back. The first time I got this was right after I bought a new HP 6830 notebook. Within 2 months I got the first blue screen. When I called HP support the tech in India told me to load the operating system disc and use the OS repair feature. Absolute mess. This futile attempt messed up my OS so badly that I had to wipe the drive and reload everything – again – from scratch. Two months later it happened again. This time I had my call elevated to a manager who told me that he was simply going to reinstall the driver. It only took about 30 minutes and everything seemed fine. Two months later it happened again. This time HP reloaded the driver AND had me set the Updates process to manual so that I could read each update before accepting. If any of the updates pertain to ATI or video then I was told to skip them. Things were fine for about 4 months. Then it happened again. By now I was not a happy camper.
Even though my company, ASE Inc., is an IT Network Support services provider (great plug, huh?) I didn’t want to bother my engineers as they need to stay billable and focus on the clients. By now I was so mad that I asked my team what they thought. Every one of them came back with, “it’s the motherboard, the chip on the motherboard.” I called HP and demanded that my motherboard be replaced. After looking at my history they agreed and dispatched a technician with a new motherboard early the next day. It took the tech about 30 minutes. The tech was great and the problem was solved.
A few things to think about. First: when I searched the web for ATI2DVAG I saw some postings describing the problem and stating that I could download a utility that would solve it. Don’t do that. The sources on the web can be worse than the problem you have. Second: in my opinion, stay away from the OS repair. As shown above, doing that caused me six more hours of problems and the real problem took only thirty minutes. Last, sometimes it can be the hardware even though you may think it has to be just software. As one person said, it could be as simple as one of the chips not acting the way it should.
Hope this helps someone.
Robert Lane
President/Owner
ASE, Inc.
Getting you ready for tomorrow today
703-273-8388 ext 111
ASE, Inc. is an IT consulting, engineering, hosted and managed support services provider covering the Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC area. Since 2000 ASE has focused on providing full outsourced IT department services to small and medium businesses as well as providing senior level expertise designing, installing and managing complex databases and network security consulting to very large entities in both commercial and federal markets. Call ASE today – 703-273-8388.