When I downloaded the latest drivers for my ati aiw 8500, on reboot XP insisted on initializing the new hardware found wizard and despite canceling out of it, the previous display drivers were apparently reinstalled.

I tried setting the bios to "not plug and play" but this did not seem to help.
Any suggestions?

yeah,

just go into device manager, and select UNINSTALL for the driver. if it tells u that u have to reboot for "the changes to take effect". dont bother, just put your new driver on..........then reboot. this is how i do it, and ive never had any problems. unless someone knows a better way ?