A few days ago I saw that Unreal Tournament 3 was added to Steam, and that they also offered some new downloadable content. I decided to give it a spin, and activated my copy of UT3 in Steam. I had to download the whole 8gb game to play it, but on a 20mbps line that’s wasn’t a problem. When I came back from work today I decided to give it a spin. To my amazement it crashed on startup, only giving me “UT3.exe has stopped working”. I figured it was the ATI drivers, so I went over and grabbed the latest and greatest Catalyst package. Upon starting the installation that failed as well. I tried in safe mode, tried uninstalling (which failed) and googled my eyes out. After a while I found this post from SuperWasp which explains how to run the ATI driver installer from command line. Basically, go to C:\ATI\Support\XX-driver-version\Driver\Bin64 and run the command “atisetup.exe -Install -Output screen“. I did it from the Driver folder, where the Setup.exe is located by calling “setup.exe -Install -Output screen” which also worked fine. The process took a few minutes, but once I rebooted the driver was updated.
PS: Windows was stuck in “Windows is now rebooting” until I unplugged my iPhone 
Now, this shows how to update the driver, but it does not explain the problem with both Unreal Tournament 3 and the driver setup software failing. I’ve looked around a bit, and based on what I’ve read it seems like the .NET Framework 2.0 files might have been damaged in some way. I tried running the “sfc /scannow” command (some info on that tool here) to let Windows search for corrupt or damaged system files, but no luck. Since .NET Framework 2.0 is an integrated part of Windows Vista I’m basically unable to uninstall it as well. If anyone has any suggestions on how to fix this I’d be really glad to hear from you.
#1 by Petter - June 12th, 2009 at 19:36
Hi, I have the same problem. Can not isntall old drivers either.
#2 by This Works - July 27th, 2009 at 10:35
This works for 32bit version as well.
Go to console. Type ‘command’ in search in Vista
> C:\ATI\Support\XX-driver-version\Driver\
> setup.exe -Install -Output screen
This even installs Catalyst Comand Centre
Kick Ring! It works…
#3 by Steven - August 5th, 2009 at 13:48
the link from Superwasp helped me out as well, thanks a lot!!
#4 by Craig - October 4th, 2009 at 17:54
Thanks for fix!
Before cd Bin64 —> in windows 7 64bit
I had to go cd Driver though
Thanks!
#5 by Bender - November 16th, 2009 at 20:32
Thanks for the tip. Just FYI (everyone), I have this issue on windows 7 74-bit as well, and this fix works on it as well.
Thanks!
#6 by nn - November 17th, 2009 at 05:39
I had different versions of the visual studio 2005 /2008 redistributables installed, once I uninstall all the extra versions the install manager works again
#7 by gsnerf - December 12th, 2009 at 15:41
The Problem lies within the use of newer versions of visual c++ runtime, which have a bug causing the installer to crash. There is a fix in the Microsoft Download Center, the vista version is here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB961894. Win7 versions should be somewhere there too.
#8 by FrogKnight - January 22nd, 2010 at 08:43
THANK YOU!!!!
#9 by creamsoda - February 1st, 2010 at 21:18
Thank you Eirik,
I had problems with this as well, because I installed some C++ updates. However this fix solved the problem for me! Thanks =)
Currently running Catalyst 10.1 on Windows 7 x64.
#10 by Nischi - February 7th, 2010 at 08:21
I also have windows 7 64bit version, and this error still persists (through several re-installations of windows 7 I might add). But this fix always does the trick! Thanks!
#11 by Bobby - February 16th, 2010 at 04:56
I found another fix that worked really well over here:
http://www.geekmontage.com/texts/how-to-fix-catalyst-install-manager-has-stopped-working-resolved/
Great article! I think you were on the right track with the runt imes.