I just wanted to follow up with this. I understand that the ATIKMDAG.SYS error can be caused by a multitude of things; however, I have sinced fixed my problem after months of trying.
I had to disable the ATI event utility in order to stop getting this error and in order to be able to install 8.11 and 8.12 drivers and CCC.
I'm just passing this along in case others wanting the stream capability are having this issue, it might help.