Maximum PC

System Specs
ASRock GM-LE880 motherboard
Athlon II X4 640 cup
2x2GB Kingston DDR3-1333 RAM sticks (4GB total)
AMD/ATI HD4250 integrated graphics
128MB of RAM shared iwth graphics
XP Home SP3 fully patched
This started with the version 12.1 and 12.2 Catalyst suite. I used Driver Sweeper and installed drivers as far back as version 11.8 with no improvement.

Over the past month or so, I've been crashing when viewing JPEGs with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. My entire system will hang, then I'll get one of three results:

1. Screen goes black and the system reboots by itself
2. Screen goes black and the system hangs, needing a manual reset
3. The screen will come back, with a message box popup:


VPU Recover has reset your graphics accelerator as
it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands.

Please tell AMD about this problem.

The generated error report contains only system information such as driver version,
AGP settings, graphics frame buffer size, etc. that will be used to analyze the
problem. This report will be treated as anonymous.

Send Error Report Don't Send

(Sending the error report is useless as it just gets bounced back by my ISP)

+++++++++++++++++

Then, in Event Viewer, under ACEEventLog, there are four entries:

Event Type: Information
Event Source: ACEEventLogSource
Event Category: None
Event ID: 0
Date: 3/31/2012
Time: 9:00:46 PM
User: N/A
Computer: FUZZY
Description:
0000000017: 2012-03-31 21:00:46:703 Exception <Removing ATI COM from ROT>: The object's type must be __ComObject or derived from __ComObject.--Parameter name: o
Exception Called by: ATI.ACE.CLI.Component.Runtime.Runtime::NotifyExiting processID:03724 threadID:(CCCThreadNew:Runtime) domainName:(ccc.exe ) assemblyName:(CLI.Component.Runtime, Version=2.0.4268.22042, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=90ba9c70f846762e)
************************************************************************************************************************


For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.


Event Type: Information
Event Source: ACEEventLogSource
Event Category: None
Event ID: 0
Date: 3/31/2012
Time: 9:00:51 PM
User: N/A
Computer: FUZZY
Description:
0000000032: 2012-03-31 21:00:51:078 RT_MMVideo::InitAdvancedVideoFeature: Failed in VideoItem = CONTROLLER_VIDEO_DEBLOCKING
Error Called by: ATI.ACE.CLI.Aspect.MMVideo.Graphics.Runtime.RT_MMVideo::InitAdvancedVideoFeature processID:02136 threadID:( ) domainName:(ccc.exe ) assemblyName:(CLI.Aspect.MMVideo.Graphics.Runtime, Version=2.0.4268.22109, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=90ba9c70f846762e)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.


Event Type: Information
Event Source: ACEEventLogSource
Event Category: None
Event ID: 0
Date: 3/31/2012
Time: 9:00:51 PM
User: N/A
Computer: FUZZY
Description:
0000000033: 2012-03-31 21:00:51:078 RT_MMVideo::InitAdvancedVideoFeature: Failed in VideoItem = CONTROLLER_VIDEO_MOSQUITONOISEREMOVAL
Error Called by: ATI.ACE.CLI.Aspect.MMVideo.Graphics.Runtime.RT_MMVideo::InitAdvancedVideoFeature processID:02136 threadID:( ) domainName:(ccc.exe ) assemblyName:(CLI.Aspect.MMVideo.Graphics.Runtime, Version=2.0.4268.22109, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=90ba9c70f846762e)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.


Event Type: Information
Event Source: ACEEventLogSource
Event Category: None
Event ID: 0
Date: 3/31/2012
Time: 9:00:51 PM
User: N/A
Computer: FUZZY
Description:
0000000035: 2012-03-31 21:00:51:234 FAILED: ADL.ADL.ADL_Display_ImageExpansion_Get
Error Called by: ATI.ACE.CLI.Aspect.DeviceProperty.Graphics.Runtime.DevicePropertyImageScalingController::Parse processID:02136 threadID:( ) domainName:(ccc.exe ) assemblyName:(CLI.Aspect.DeviceProperty.Graphics.Runtime, Version=2.0.4268.22106, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=90ba9c70f846762e)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Clicking on that link points to .NET Framework 2.0 issues. I ran the .NET Framework Setup Verification Utility, and all the Frameworks on my PC - 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 - all verify as installed properly.
Any help here, guys?

Does it do this with Irfanview?
Have you run an antivirus and Malwarebytes?

1. No problems viewing JPEGs with Irfanview.
2. Avira full system scan, Malwarebytes scan, SuperAntiSpyware scan, Spybot scan all come up clean.

I'm not sure how, but the very latest Catalyst suite - 12.3 - released on 28 March just 21 days after the 12.2 suite - seems to have solved this issue. I've been unable to crash this rig since installing it last night. I'm marking this as solved for the time being.

Well, AMD drivers are notoriously terrible.

If it ever derps up on you again, use Irfanview until AMD fixes it again. Not the best solution, but when we're stumped...

Exactly right. Workaround time.
And when I do get a separate video card, it'll be another nVidia. My old FX never gave me a lick of trouble in 7 years (except for leaky capacitors(which I replaced)). I'd still use it if only this mobo had an AGP slot.

My 520 hasn't died on me yet, and neither did my 7200. The only reason I upgraded was I needed a bit more power.