ATI Driver crashing in Photoshop

I've been living with this for a while, but now I just lost a huge project and am getting sick of it.

When working in photoshop my Vaio SA will lock up, then the screen will go blank, come back saying the ATI driver stopped responding, and photoshop crashes.

No new sony drivers, ATI drivers say I need to look for mfg drivers.

Help?

 

you can install new AMD drivers, but you need the mobility ones and not the generic desktop ones. here is the latest Catalyst 12.4 WHQL driver. make sure you install them on top of SONY drivers to keep the graphics switching working.

a warning though: i got green Flash videos on YouTube and black videos on Windows Media Player after installing this driver. as far as i know, Catalyst 12.1 does not have this problem. that could be just me, as others use this driver just fine.

 

to aan310:
I have the same problem on my vaio SE i am very upset about sony. This was my first and last vaio.
I found out that you can get Photoshop to run stable if you turn off the openGL functions. As i turned the option off i never experienced a crash. The bad thing is that you miss functions like rotating the work area.

to darxide_sorcerer:
Thanks. I didnt know that this is possible. I realize now that i tried to install the desktop driver and that sony just blocks the official amd driver.
But why do people use the leshcat drivers if you just can install the official amd driver on top of the sony one?

 

Good question. I also want to know what exactly is meant by "install ontop", if you install the mobility package won't it just overwrite the existing Sony drivers?

 

the Intel and AMD GPU drivers are packaged in a special way for switchable graphics to work. updating the AMD drivers keeps that functionality working, but you cannot update the Intel drivers to the latest version because it will break the graphics switching ability. this is where Leshcat's drivers come to help; they are a unified set of drivers for Intel+AMD laptops that include the latest drivers from both manufacturers.

so in short, you can install the new AMD mobility drivers, but you should do that without uninstalling the current AMD drivers. some people like a cleaner approach to installing drivers, i.e. uninstall the current one and install the new ones. this, however, breaks the switchable graphics; hence, installing the AMD drivers on top of SONY drivers. this will update the AMD part of the switchable graphics drivers while keeping the Intel part intact.

or you can use Leshcat's drivers which include its own version of "driver cleaner" (in order to remove all traces of the previous drivers) and installs the latest drivers from both manufacturers.

 

Thanks for the detailed post. I don't mean to hijack the thread, but after installing the latest 12.4 from the link above, I'm experiencing the same glitches as with using the leshcat mods, including green video when playing flash in any browser, and lack of BluRay playback. I have a CB series with 6630M. The GPU in the device manager changes from 6630M to "6600 and 6700 series" after installing the new drivers.

 

like i said before, as far as i know, the mobility Catalyst 12.1 does not have the aforementioned video playback issues. maybe you could try that. the GPU name changing to "6600 and 6700 series" is nothing to be concerned about at all.

 

Sorry I didn't notice the edit above. I'll try this one out now, thanks.

 

I can confirm the 12.1 works without any issues. OP maybe you want to try these and see if it helps your Photoshop issues.