The strange logic of drivers in Vista

[Scott]

I downloaded and installed the Public Beta. And yesterday (29 August), I
downloaded and installed Pre-RC1.

There have been a number of noticeable improvements in pre-RC1. Namely
speed. Although individual Windows (be they programs or Explorer windows)
still mysteriously freeze up on occasion, but not as much this time around.

But I digress...

To my utter surprise...

Pre-RC1 also has the following improvements.

Printer drivers for both my HP 6800 and my Brother 7820N printers.

They also had drivers (which were installed on my first boot) for my Leadtek
Winfast TV 2000 TV card. That REALLY surprised me.

However, the TV card drivers are worthless. I assumed the card would work
with Media Center. It did not. So I can't help but wonder what the point
of installing drivers for hardware is if they don't do anything for it.

And last but not least. I'm completely baffled as to why there are no
drivers for my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 card. In Beta 2 and pre-RC1, I had
no sound until I downloaded drivers from creative.com.

Now don't you think there are far more users of Sound Blaster Audigy cards,
than there are of the other hardware I mentioned?

Logic dictates that this should all have been the other way around. The
Audigy 2 drivers should have been there to begin with.

So Microsoft, how about getting those in the next release eh?

Thanks

 

[Tom Ziegmann]

Hello Scott,

There are no drivers for your audigy card because the drivers that used to
be there were causing many BSODs and complete system failures.

Tom Ziegmann
Microsoft Certified Professional
Windows Vista / Server Longhorn Technical Beta Tester
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 Technical Beta Tester

 

[D. Rogers]

Doesn't media center also require 3rd party decoder software to work with a
tv card? If I remember right when I built a media center a couple years
back I had to purchase and install the nVidia decoder plugin before
everything worked. I would guess this is why you can't use it with your tv
card. Just a guess.

 

[Scott]

Hello Scott,

There are no drivers for your audigy card because the drivers that used to
be there were causing many BSODs and complete system failures.

OK. That makes sense.

Meanwhile, I'd still like to figure out the useless driver Microsoft had for
my TV card. ;-)

 

[Scott]

tv card? If I remember right when I built a media center a couple years
back I had to purchase and install the video decoder plug-in before
everything worked. I would guess this is why you can't use it with your
tv card. Just a guess.

Yes. Media Center does. In my case, I was using the card with Windows XP
Professional. The drivers and Software came with the card.

I never bothered trying them with Beta 2. I might see if they work with
pre-RC1. But I'm still mystified at why Vista installed drivers for the
card. What are they for if they don't work with existing software?

Weird....

 

[Brian P Fielding]

5539 loads version 2.08.0370 drivers for the Audigy card which do not work
(at least I cannot get them to work).

Loading the latest (released 11 Aug) Vista ones (2.10.0000) from Creative's
site seem to work fine - can get PowerDVD, Media player etc to work.

Brian

 

[Scott]

5539 loads version 2.08.0370 drivers for the Audigy card which do not work
(at least I cannot get them to work).

Loading the latest (released 11 Aug) Vista ones (2.10.0000) from Creative's
site seem to work fine - can get PowerDVD, Media player etc to work.

Brian

The Creative drivers do work, but a lot of the sound I get is distorted
or clips at higher volumes (and no I don't mean full blast).
Thankfully the latest ones install quite easily. That wasn't true for
what Creative offered a few months back.
Otherwise the sound works in all programs.

--
Scott http://angrykeyboarder.com
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