Solving The Vista Radeon Code 43 problem

If, like me, you have been a member of "The Code 43 Club", and various versions of Vista betas, and now RTM simply refuse to load the video drivers, you know how frustrating it can be. I have a 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro, not a kick-ass video card or anything nowadays, but certainly more than capable of pulling off anything Aero wanted to do. It can run FarCry at 1280x1024 with high detail, AA off admittedly, but no problems there. So there simply has to be a way to get it working. It's on the supported list for goodness sake!

There have been countless attempts to work around the issue, and believe me, I've tried them. You can install XP drivers (ATI or Omega) in XP Compatibility mode, and that goes some way towards addressing it - Vista will then load your drivers, and you'll get some hardware acceleration. But you won't get glass, since the DWM needs DirectX 10 drivers, and XP doesn't have any. As far as I understand, it never will either.

I tried the ATI Vista Beta drivers, the RTM drivers, fiddling with inf files and device IDs therein, trawling through the setupapi, setupact and setuperr logs in %systemroot%, flashing the BIOS on my card, who knows what, and still no glass. Still Code 43 in device manager.

Then there was a suggestion it was the motherboard, I had a MSI 746F Ultra at the time (yeah,yeah, check out granddad with his Socket A), which sports a SiS 746 chipset. Never had any problems with it, but it had to be worth a go looking around for GART drivers or whatever they're called. Nothing.

So I went and bought the cheapest new mainboard I could find that supported AGP, and bingo, it worked straight away! £40 for the board, £30 for a 512MB stick of DDR, has to be the cheapest new PC I've ever bought ;).

Since I built the pc for around the £300 mark 18 months ago I don't think £70 is a bad investment to make it "Vista Ready"

And that's why I don't touch macs.