After having updated the drivers for my graphic card to the latest version - Catalyst 10.12 as I write this post - taken directly from the ATI website, I started to experiment some Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) at the startup of the OS.

More specifically it all was happening when the Catalyst CCC was about to be fully loaded.

The error message reported by the system was something like: “atikmpag.sys has stopped responding”, followed by the memory dump.

I tried some solutions found on the internet but nothing worked: I kept having the BSOD at the startup; I tried reinstalling the drivers but neither that has worked, I even tried some old versions of the drivers with no luck.

I was however able to startup the machine in recovery mode, so I started looking for some files left behind by the Uninstall manager: in my private profile directory I found a file that was storing all the drivers settings and customization that were made during the previous months. That file (called Profiles.xml) was not removed during the uninstall process, looking into that I’ve found some settings that turned to be the cause of my troubles with the new drivers.

To solve this issue just delete the “Profiles.xml” you can find in the user profile directory: ‘C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE’; at the next restart this file will be recreated by the system with the default settings.

Maybe in the past I installed some gaming profile that caused some problems or tried some ‘experimental’ configuration to improve performances that was causing troubles, I don’t really know and, actually, I don’t really care Open-mouthed smile, but resetting it to the default values solved the problem for me avoiding a complete OS installation from scratch.