Earlier in the week, when I was turning off my work computer, I selected the “Update and restart” option.
This morning I turned on the computer before commencing my morning routine, so that it would be booted up and ready to go for 9am.
At 9am, I found it was about 12% through the updates, and the screen advised me that it would “take a while”.
Sure enough, in the end, it took about 1.5 hours to install all the updates for Windows 10.
I was overjoyed to finally have access to my desktop…until I noticed the resolution was completely wrong and my dual monitors which are usually extended were actually mirrored.
Readers of this blog may remember that I had to play around with the drivers for the ATI Radeon HD 4250 in this computer: https://tech4lib.wordpress.com/2016/02/03/windows-10-pro-and-legacy-amd-drivers/
So I hit “Win + R”, noticed “devmgmt.msc” was still there from the last time I went through this process, and hit Enter.
As per my blog post from February, I expanded the “Display adapters” section, right-clicked on “ATI Radeon HD 4250”, and noted that “Device status” read that there were no drivers installed. Fun…
Skimming through my old blog post, I switched to the “Microsoft Basic Adapter”, which in hindsight I probably didn’t need to do but I’m documenting here anyway since I did it. In Device Manager, I noticed my “ATI Radeon HD 4250” adapter had been replaced with “Microsoft Basic Adapter”.
Then I re-ran the executable “13-1-legacy_vista_win7_win8_64_dd_ccc.exe” which was still in my Download directory from February. It said that the ADMD Catalyst Control Centre was already installed, but that it would happily install it again if I clicked the button.
Moments pass, my monitors flicker, and voila! My extended display is back! I went back into Device Manager, noticed that “ATI Radeon HD 4250” was back as the Display adapter, and reviewed the Events tab.
- 9:21: Device install requested
- 9:22: Device install requested
- 9:24: Device migrated
- 9:24: Device installed (c0296217.inf)
- 10:14: Driver service added (BasicDisplay)
- 10:14: Device installed (display.inf)
- 10:16: Driver service added (amdkmdap)
- 10:16: Driver service added (amdkmdap)
- 10:16: Driver service added (AMD External Ev…)
- 10:16: Device installed (c8160540.inf)
Looking back at the blog post from February, that’s pretty much exactly what happened back then too.
I couldn’t find c0296217.inf on my system, so no wonder Device Manager said there was no driver installed. And c8160540.inf can be found at C:\AMD\Support\13-1-legacy_vista_win7_win8_64_dd_ccc\Packages\Drivers\Display\W86A_INF\C8160540.inf
I’m certainly no pro when it comes to drivers and hardware, but I’m glad that I was able to make it work again!
I have another work system which has some third-party driver adapter drivers, and Windows Updates almost always cause them to be uninstalled, and then I have to re-install them to re-gain the desired dual-monitor functionality.
In any case, I can finally start work this morning…
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