like the title says im trying to figure out how to install the ati proprietary drivers without running any updates, i tried once already and just got a black screen, but on another with updates it works fine

fedora 9 has just gone unsupported - so it is no wonder you don't want to do the updates.
I figure you'll have to get the driver off ATI.

But you have not said how you attempted to install the driver and what the difference between your examples were and how you got the "updates" or even what you mean by this. Show us the terminal commands and output.

ok hard drive number 1, i installed fedora and used the update manager to do a full update, then i went to ati's website and downloaded the drivers and put them in my home folder then i went into the terminal and did this

then it went on to install the driver and everything worked pefectly.

hard drive number 2, installed fedora did not do any updates, went to ati's website and downloaded the drivers and ran the same command as on hard drive 1 and restarted, it started to go to the login screen but all i got was a black screen, left it sitting there for an hour, still the same thing.

so i restarted edit the kernel at boot so that i could get into single user mode and i went to the folder where the ati drivers were installed and ran the uninstall file, then i ran the command startx and the xserver started without a problem

Lets make sure I got this right - you have two installs of fedora9 (you won't be able to get updates for much longer) on one computer but with two HDDs. These are default installs. You are dual-booting.

Check your kernel version in each install: uname -r

What has probably happened is that you have a kernel upgrade on the first HDD and not on the second but you have the same binary driver for each. This cannot be expected to work.

Installing from the ATI script is not best practise. You normally get the proprietary fglrx driver prepackaged from the rpm fusion repositories. (see second link below)

yum install kmod-fglrx

http://www.fedorafaq.org/f9/#radeon
... there were no ati drivers at the time this was written. The radeon hd driver is probably worth a try, I've had decent results from it before. It may be that there is no ati support for the default install kernel - i.e. you have to upgrade for ATI 3D acceleraltion.

http://www.fedorafaq.org/#radeon
... this will probably only work for recent kernels

You are strongly urged to install a recent version of fedora (or other gnu/linux).

unfortunately fedora 9 is what we use at school though they are going to switch to fedora 11 some time later for now this is what we are using, im just doing this to help out my class mates i kinda figure already that everyone would have to update but thanks for the help

OK - sure. FYI: binary drivers generally need to be recompiled for different kernels. The ati site will give you a list of drivers and the kernels they support. Old ati cards are not normally supported by ati - instead, the specifications are released to the free software community.

The main trouble with self-compiled drivers is that they need to be recompiled each time there is a kernel upgrade.

Distros usually have packaged drivers which can be upgraded when something changes.

Always try the free software driver first, then the packaged driver, before going to the vendor.

well im not to much a fedora user mostly *buntu user so this is a little different for me but thanks anyway

*buntu is the same - except your first point of call is:
system > administration > hardware drivers

you also get meta packages for installing common configurations.

The routine of going to the HW vendor for drivers is often thought of as "normal" or "good practice".
gnu/linux users need to get out of this habit of thought.

You usually end up going to the vendor if the latest driver on the vendors site enables parts of the card you need which are not enabled in the packaged drivers. Some goes for building drivers from source.