X800, Requesting tech help with CCC

[Plata]

Hello everryone at Legit Reviews, I have been browsing the forums here for a while but this will be my first post, sadly it isn't on a very happy note...

I build my PC about 4 years ago or so.. she was good to me and pretty up there in standards for a while... She is a AMD 64bit 3500+ system on a Gygabyte motherboard, 2 HDDS, 1 WD raptor 10,000 RPM ( main partition with XP pro SP2 ) and a utility HDD with 120gigs; 1 gig Corsair Xtreme memory; with the ATI PCIe X800.

The problem is that I just recently re-formatted for the first time in a while, I downloaded the latest Catalyst driver back and it was giving me some ridiculous error message that I coulden't really decypher so I hit the google and searched for solutions and read that maybe it was .Net 3.x giving me issues or maybe I should re-vert to an older driver version. I took the latter option and grabbed the catalyst 5.8 driver pack which was a rather big mistake on my part and in retrospec I should've grabbed Catalyst 7.x . Well, i installed said 5.8 driver package, re-booted and Windows started to load and I hear a click coming from my tower, after I hear the click I get the Blue screen everyone loves to see, my computer re-boots and AGAIN the blue screen. again and again I get this and ( thinking irrationally when I should've tried safe mode >< ) I give up and re-format again....

And this is where I am with you fine people right now, on a fresh install without my Catalyst drivers... I would like a reccomendation for how to go about this installation process as I have gathered that ATI drivers can be rather finicky.

[spyre]

Install .net 1.1 and 1.1 service pack, install .net 2.0 and then install the latest drivers and CCC. Alternately install drivers without the CCC and use ATI Tray Tool instead.

[Darksylum]

I personaly have found the CAtalyst 6.9 driver package to be the winner for all Dirext x9 cards from the x000 series all the way to the X1k series. I not only get the most stable performance out of it on every system i put it on but my 3d mark scores on my personal systems ( this 1 with 2x x1950xtx in crossfire and my older 1 with 2x x850 in crossfire) see anywhere fromm a 500-1000 point gain in total points. It well outperforms the latest 8.1-2 drivers and is way more stable than the favored 7.1+ driver series wich I have had many bugs with.