How I Fixed AMD Vision Engine Control Center

My AMD Vision Engine Control Center (formerly Catalyst Control Center) was not loading. I even wrote a lengthy rant about it on superuser.com.

I tried it all. I went through all the forums, and if I had a penny for every time I saw somebody swearing AMD for being unable to write working software, I would retire.

I even called AMD support desk and followed their instructions for an hour, going from one level to another. The advices they gave me were so beaten up and standard that it's not even funny: upgrade to the latest version. And if latest didn't fix, update to the latest beta. It seems like a mantra with AMD: we didn't fix anything, but upgrade to the latest anyway, who know, maybe God will see how much we trying here and help us.

I am uncertain what exactly did fix it, but since I was seriously contemplating some major time consuming crap, that nobody likes doing, here's what I did, that ended up fixing the problem. I did several things, then rebooted, so which one exactly did the trick, I don't know.

1. Stop WMI service and remove C:\Windows\System32\wbem\repository
2. Delete C:\Windows\Prefetch folder
3. In registry, create following string value in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework:
   OnlyUseLatestCLR="1"
4. Remove ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib from assembly cache
   
   ... And the last step:
   
5. Reboot.

That is what worked for me. Which exactly of the items did help, I don't know, but if someone will be able to fix the goddamn ATI control center, my time typing all of this stuff is not wasted.