Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

anonymuos — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 13:59:46 GMT

How Microsoft treats its existing fully supported OS customers is apparent from what their stance is for AHCI and Windows XP. Ideally, XPSP3 should have included a generic native AHCI SATA class driver for Windows XP. Many hard drive controller manufacturers who don't supply an AHCI driver screw their customers because XP then never works in full native SATA mode with NCQ et al; it only works in IDE emulation mode giving inferior performance. Microsoft should still consider giving XP users a generic AHCI controller class driver.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

Domenico — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 14:03:19 GMT

my samsung Omnia /windows mobile 6.1)

not work in Senen (for now )

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

anonymuos — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 14:19:29 GMT

Forgot to add: Because of MS's decision to not backport StorPort to XP, consumer RAID performance also sucks. How can they do this for a supported OS?

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

Digi — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 17:16:05 GMT

It should also be easy to completly uninstall devices and drivers. Devices come and go and you easily end up system with bunch of obsolete drivers installed if you upgrade your computer often or otherwise need temporarily to use different devices.

Why not add Device Cleanup Wizard "Device X hasn’t been used for a few months. Do you want to uninstall it?" I still sometimes encounter drivers which can't be uninstalled from Add/Remove programs. Of course you can look drvstore folder and then execute DPInst.exe /u path_to_driver_folde.r But that isn't very easy.

And now when we are talking about devices, every time you change your device location for example to another USB port, some sort of installation process is executed. Isn't it possible to make system work so that once driver is installed device can be connected to any port without any extra processing?

And finally it would be nice if you could use USB memory sticks in sort guest of mode so that no installation information about them isn't saved into registry.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

Lockon — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 19:15:49 GMT

I have a problem with seven windows, two devices can not detect Ethernet and audio I have a motherboard: asrock 775 S61 with Intel (630) (661 fx sis) HT 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 and the audio is a C-media: cmi9739a/9761 @ sis 7012, there is no driver for Windows Vista which leaves me with no Internet access and audio, please adds support for native Matroska and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

manicmarc — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 19:57:42 GMT

On the subject of USB sticks, it should be possible to easily assign one a name, rather than a letter. Something that is guaranteed to be available on another PC, so short cuts work.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

CvP — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:35:31 GMT

[quote]Why not add Device Cleanup Wizard "Device X hasn’t been used for a few months. Do you want to uninstall it?" I still sometimes encounter drivers which can't be uninstalled from Add/Remove programs. Of course you can look drvstore folder and then execute DPInst.exe /u path_to_driver_folde.r But that isn't very easy.

[quote]please adds support for native Matroska and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)[/quote]

++support.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

steven_sinofsky — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:19:15 GMT

@marcinw -- this isn't a good place to report your experience or bugs. Please sure the "Send Feedback" button to do that.

Thank you.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

marcinw — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:24:59 GMT

@Steven,

I'm sending my feedback using "Send feedback" button.

But please - what was wrong in my last post, that it was deleted ? This forum IS place for discussion too... And interesting, that moment after deleting my post there was your comment added...

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

Dean Harding — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 01:03:33 GMT

@anonymuos: What's the point of releasing a new version of the OS, if you're going to backport all important features to the older one anyway?

Why not ask Microsoft to backport Aero to XP while we're at it?

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

marcinw — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 01:35:37 GMT

@Dean Harding,

when I look into build 7000, I think, that moving Aero effects + some features from Windows 6.x to Windows 5.x codebase and creating something like Windows XP SE would be very good move for Microsoft. And this is not only my opinion - see zdnet.com for example...

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

Dean Harding — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:13:37 GMT

marcinw: How do you think it would be a "very good move for Microsoft"? How would removing any incentive to upgrade be *at all* good for Microsoft?

And please provide some actual references for your ZDNet claim. I looked on the ZDNet site and couldn't find anybody claiming that porting aero to XP would be a "very good move for Microsoft".

By the way, I've been trying Windows 7 out on my laptop, and so far it's pretty nice. Though, I'm not sure I really like the new taskbar. If I've got multiple tabs open in IE, and then I switch windows, how do I quickly switch back to whatever tab I was looking at before? It seems like I've got to click on the taskbar button, then try to visually figure out which tab it was. Anyway, that's not really on-topic here :-)

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

anonymuos — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:40:02 GMT

@Dean Harding, I guess you think Aero in the same league as native Serial ATA support. I think you should read up a bit on StorPort and SCSIport. Anyways, it was introduced in Windows Server 2003, not Vista. It's not about backporting non-trivial features, but critical hardware technologies must be supported. In old of the older WinHEC 2006 presentations, it appears MS was even considering backporting StorPort/ATAport to Windows XP.

I guess it's time to move on, there's no use ranting here.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

steven_sinofsky — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:44:03 GMT

@anonymuos - we have storport/sataport in Windows Vista and Windows 7 as we said.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms803183.aspx

I think for this one there are also BIOS support issues to consider beyond the software drivers. But we have included this since server 2003 in client and server OSs. With a feature like this, work across the ecosystem is required and we often use venues such as WinHEC to solicit input to assist in informing decisions. In addition we consider the customer scenarios for a new technology.

I believe the presentation you mention is http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/b/9/5b97017b-e28a-4bae-ba48-174cf47d23cd/STO089_WH06.ppt, which I think fairly says it is under review at that time (WinHEC 2006). This is a normal part of the development process when working across the hardware/bios/software.

I'm sorry we did not support this to the degree you would have liked.

--Steven

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

im.thatoneguy — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:02:07 GMT

This falls partly under "Send Feedback" (which I've already done. But I think this comment is more generic and very important.

* Computers MUST connect to the internet on their first boot.

NForce 1 and 2 motherboard chipsets never got official Vista Drivers. As a result they don't get an ethernet driver out of the box. I was able to install the XP drivers manually and they worked getting me on the internet and Windows Update then added newer versions.

Thankfully I have two computers. Most people don't have two computers.

Microsoft needs to put a LOT of effort into ensuring every computer that gets Windows 7 installed on it can connect to the internet out of the box. Once on ther internet we can then search for new drivers, troubleshooting etc.

Printer drivers are fine out of the box. But ethernet should be priority #1. Without a connection to the internet you can't push windows updates, you can't push new printer drivers--you can't do anything.

Even if NVidia, Intel or ASUS has dropped support for an old motherboard chipset--you need to desperately push to ensure their internet is enabled out of the box-- even if it means using a WindowsXP Driver like I used.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

kudraw — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:12:17 GMT

Hi Steven, please fix nForce networking problems (it not recognise drivers).

This is what I call "essentials driver". If I have network working, I can download from Windows Update other drivers.

(And then not 1gb printers drivers support :D ).

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

Gavinrouse — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:08:32 GMT

@Digi - this may explain why moving USB devices to different ports can trigger an installation:

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/11/10/255047.aspx

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

Eghost — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:43:38 GMT

While I believe the "Device Cleanup Wizard" would have merits I believe that would constitute a feature, and the beta of windows 7 is "feature complete" according to Mike Nash. As far as uninstalling drivers Microsoft should raise the bar for it to be a singed driver. I have seen lots of issues in windows because drivers would not un-install properly. This is not Microsoft's fault but they could enforce a more stringent standard for un-installing drivers before giving the driver a signed status.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

arunpv — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:33:21 GMT

My mobility Radeon 9700 was not recognized by Windows 7 but it did recognize Linksys PCI Wireless card( thats good i guess).

I downloaded and installed Windows 7 on my Dell Inspiron 9100. I did see a Blue screen of death while installing VPN client and later i had to restore it back original configuration. but so far its running ok and boots better than Vista and wakes up faster from Sleep.

Do we have to UnInstall and do a fresh install when Windows 7 get released or we get updates?

Thanks

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

hitman721 — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:43:27 GMT

Steven,

First and foremost, congrats on getting the beta out. I am writing this to you on Windows 7 Beta 1 Ultimate 64 bit. The fact that I can write to you on Engineering Windows 7 is major credit to your team. The work isn't over but the fruits of your teams labor can be seen.

But on a side note, my computer has improve TONS using Windows 7. I don't think I want to go back to Vista. LOL! Great job so far!

My question has to do with companies who aren't assisting you with Drivers and Device Support. How are you guys handling a company or competitor who might not reveal that kind of sensitive information to Microsoft or the Windows 7 Team? Are you guys going so far as to bring those devices in and figuring out support from scratch? There are several instances where companies may not want to cooperate. Apple and Google come to mind along with their phones, music players, and other devices. This also includes devices that I saw on G4's CES program that use Open Source OSes. Granted that most would because with a billion users, Windows is so very ubiquitous. It would just be interesting to understand the methology when you have to support a device in which that company wouldn't be fully cooperative.

Thanks for the blog and the stellar beta. Can't wait for the RC!

DRM

joe7pak — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:47:24 GMT

While I've enjoyed all of the entries in this blog, there is an elephant in the room, and that elephant is DRM.

I want to know how the Damned Restrictions Management are going to affect:

- Playback of my music

- Playback of my videos

- Hard drive life

- Battery life

- Overall computer performance

I'm amazed that this exceptionally important subject has not yet been addressed.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

hicks — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:37:55 GMT

As noted in the article, the same chip is used in different devices. Will Windows suggest a generic driver where a manufacturer-specific one is lacking? Or an alternate manufacturer's driver for a device that uses the same chipset?

I've seen Generics in the windows driver database, but unless you know what chipset your card uses, you're out of luck.

Additionally, if Windows can't find any drivers, would it be possible to provide, up-front, the information that might be required to search for the correct driver?

Telling me I might want to go to Nvidia.com for my graphics card driver definitely puts me on the right track, but I'm not sure if the fact that "Nidia is the manufacturer" was new to me, that I would know what to do when I got there.

Doing that PCI-SIG lookup with the PCI ID would be good - maybe even advise that I pull the card and look on the board, or read the serial number from the bottom of the device -- anything to help.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

marcinw — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:01:11 GMT

@Dean Harding,

yes, sorry, I can't find it right now. Maybe I have mixed sites and article was somewhere else...but still:

Microsoft depends on customers. And they're asking and asking and asking and are afraid about such things like DRM or similar...and they like more older XP (see "Ed Bott: If you love Windows XP, you'll hate Windows 7" and other in http://news.zdnet.com/2463-9595_22-246570.html). If XP works better for many of them (and will be in many typical tasks, because runs the smallest one amount of code), why not mix the best things from Windows 5.x and 6.x and make really great release ?

7 seems to resolve some issues, but adds new one...many new one (this time definitely see link for zdnet.com articles).

You can say in this moment of course, that I'm against changes. No, it's not. I was testing Vista, Server 2008 and now 7. And still I can't do something inside. Starting from such easy things like entering "C:\Documents and Settings" (yes, I know it's link, but FAR for example doesn't have problem with it) or creating icon for enabling/disabling network interface, ending on removing useless system components... And still virtual machine with XP is smallest one (on HDD and in RAM) and works the faster.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

marcinw — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:21:56 GMT

I know, that my previous post was maybe a little controversial, but I'm looking into the smallest one Windows 7 features and have very mixed feelings.

Example: such easy feature like Clear Type tuner. It was such application developed by Microsoft for Windows XP and it had wizard + options for manual tuning. In Windows 7 options were removed and wizard has got 4 steps (instead of 2 like earlier).

I'm sorry, but creating innovations for any price sometimes make, that things are going to be difficult. Why not give people what they want ?

Creating XP with all patches, .NET versions, updates + some generally good estimated Windows 6.x features (like loading DLLs in random places) can be very good estimated by market... Short work, less problems with optimalizing. It could give developers time for working on sandboxing applications and other security things...

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

Domenico — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:08:27 GMT

@im.thatoneguy

@kudraw

I have Asus P5n 650 SLI Nvidia (intel)

Work perfect with Seven

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

kudraw — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:27:40 GMT

@Domenico: I'm referring to nForce2/3 series, that works good with Windows Vista, but in Seven there is a problem with the NForce Network Controller.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

locolorenzo — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:38:41 GMT

I am very impressed with the fact every device that I have used or installed has worked or that there is a work around, except for Legacy IR support I have no complaints, the only device that missed in the installation of Window 7 beta it installed in the PDC build so it will be resolved before release.

I use some fairly exotic hardware peripherals and the software, devices and drivers seem to interface very well.

I was expecting some trouble with the new build but have found it to be a nearly finished OS and I have found that most non plug and play devices work...CCD Cameras, Optical Devices and Robotic drives.

Good work, I will be pushing the OS in my side business.

thanks

tryon — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:38:56 GMT

I'd like to thank the windows team to have make our life so much easier with the drivers being directly downloaded from the Internet (it was already in place in vista, yes but its much better in seven)

being able to export specific or all our driver and being able to import them again directly from windows would be a good idea as you may very well know formatting and reinstalling windows is part of almost every windows user and easing this task would be greatly appreciated.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

Domenico — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:47:06 GMT

@kudraw

Try Vista Driver with this method

http://dovellas.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!B957C4A398135A12!3797.entry?wa=wsignin1.0&sa=65431175 (this is for Audio on asus p4p 800 Year 2001) :D

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

mvadu — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:55:24 GMT

Hi Steven,

first of all, i must congratulate for pulling Windows 7-Beta so far. I really enjoyed every minute I was using W7.

On the topic of drivers, any one noticed how robust the initial VGA generic driver is? You get all those little lights in the task bar, the desktop is crisp, it is really nice. And as soon as I was online it downloaded all the drivers (Realtek wireless card, ATI Radeon X1200)..

Keep up the good work team.. I am waiting for the final release now.. Hopefully Ultimate version will not be way above my budget :)

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

Neken — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:02:26 GMT

My biggest complain so far is my issue with the sleep mode and hibernate mode not working under Windows 7 ultimate x64. Both worked fine under Windows Vista x64 SP1 and now my computer needs a hard shutdown if I try going into both modes. All the drivers installed properly so I'm completely blind to the reason of this issue.

Anyway, beside that problem everything is solid and fast, and I'm happy to enjoy even more speed out of my quad core cpu. I can't wait for further patches to fix stuff and the next beta of Windows 7.

This will probably be the first version of Windows I will buy in a store (not OEM I mean :P).

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

mvadu — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:13:44 GMT

Neken, most of the time Sleep and Hibernate problems are due to Display driver, and/or AntiVirus and some times coupled with bios.

Try to install different version of the driver (you can try Vista drivers, ATI Catalyst for Vista worked perfectly fine for me in W7 as well)

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

im.thatoneguy — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 03:36:46 GMT

@Domenico

That's because that's an NForce 3+ chipset.

NForce 1 and 2 aren't supported by NVidia... vis a vis not supported by Microsoft.

Nvidia just abandoned all of their 4 year old chipsets when Vista came out. You can still get them to work with XP drivers and through automatic update. But the Windows 7 DVD doesn't include anything leaving the user without an internet connection out of the box. Obviously that's highly undesirable.

The article talks about common drivers between thousands of models. Covering NForce 2 would include a vast majority of Athlon XP computers.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

tryon — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 06:50:29 GMT

@Neken: My notebook keeps blowing up air forever when hibernating (until the battery's empty), that should have been fixed before the beta.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

Domenico — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:13:50 GMT

try here

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/category/w7itpro

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

afscrome — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:07:15 GMT

One problem I found with printer drivesr between XP and Vista (and also XP and Win 7)was the name of the drivers being changed.

For example I have a Canon MP360 all in one connected to an XP machine. On XP (32 bit), windows called the device "Canon MP360 Series Printer", but on Vista / Win 7, the name changed to "Canon Inkjet MP360 Series", so when vista x64 / win 7 x64 tried to connect to the printer over the network, it was unable to find a driver for "Canon MP360 Series Printer" locally, and was unable to download the driver fro the XP machine because it didn't have an x64 driver.

Can you please test that the names of devices (particularly printers for the above reasoning) used in drivers don't get changed between different versions of Windows.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

v_jirovsky — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:14:00 GMT

in Windows 7 i cant use DVB-T on my card Leadtek Winfast DV1800-H. :-(

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

rachidfinge — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:27:20 GMT

Hi Grant,

I'd like to comment on something you wrote: "The primary way to get updated drivers is generally through optional updates in Windows Update".

That seems very sensible to me from a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" perspective. However, after I installed Windows 7 beta on my netbook, there was no audio driver installed. When I checked Windows Update, there was one, but it was marked as optional, even though this wasn't really an update: this was downloading a driver for a device that didn't work on my system yet.

Can't this be changed? Driver updates for a device that already works remain optional, while drivers for a device that does NOT work yet because there is no driver installed yet should be marked as important, so they get downloaded and installed automatically.

I'm looking forward to your reply. :)

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

Jalf — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:39:02 GMT

"On the topic of drivers, any one noticed how robust the initial VGA generic driver is? You get all those little lights in the task bar, the desktop is crisp, it is really nice. And as soon as I was online it downloaded all the drivers (Realtek wireless card, ATI Radeon X1200).."

Yep, I noticed the same thing. I actually ran with the default driver for most of day 1, simply because it ran great, and I completely forgot about updating to a "real" driver.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

Syllopsium — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:43:58 GMT

I would like to see, if possible, a 'no longer supported' option. For instance, all Wacom serial tablets are unsupported on Vista x64 and only grudgingly work on x32. Ditto many other devices (i.e. Adaptec slimscsi 1460).

A message that says 'This device is no longer supported by the manufacturer. It is possible there may be third party drivers, but we do not have any information about this' would potentially be quite useful, even if it would bloat the install with even more vendor ID strings.

It looks like hibernate problems are quite common. My machine always bluescreens when returning from sleep. Nvidia don't want to know, despite them clearly being the culprit (BSOD in nvidia driver).

I have to say I'm disappointed with some of the bundled driver choices. An audigy 4 - a well established and mature product, isn't supported by default (yes, it is in Windows Update). This is even more odd when it's explicitly included in the list of tested drivers above.

I suppose I can understand the basic functionality in OS/enhanced functionality from online split. I would expect more bundled drivers though, and attribute this to being a beta and Microsoft wanting to reduce it's hideous bandwidth bill ;).

Banning vendors from claiming compatibility when it's 32 bit only

Syllopsium — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:17:31 GMT

It would also be useful to be able to stop IHVs from being able to claim Vista/Windows 7 compatibility when it's actually only 32 bit. This includes Microsoft's own compatibility guidance, which can be wrong with regards to 64 bit support.

Too many companies treat 64 bit as an inconvenient afterthought.

Also, despite all the enforcement WHQL is supposed to provide, I shudder to think of how much worse drivers would be if they had a free for all as frankly WHQL does not consistently work.

If WHQL actually worked, you'd expect drivers to be stable under pretty much all scenarios and to enforce support of technologies like PAE - which commonly is not supported (Yes, admittedly PAE is a largely unnecessary hack given the existance of 64 bit platforms). The reality is that it's not infrequently necessary to use non WHQL drivers to obtain stable functionality.

I will grant, however, that the situation is slowly improving.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

Syllopsium — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:36:35 GMT

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, a perfect example of my 'WHQL is worthless' opinion.

Install the latest 181.20 WHQL 64bit Vista Nvidia forceware on a system with two 7600GTs and it bluescreens, even if you uninstall the existing driver first. Install it in safe mode and it bluescreens better than 30% of the time on boot. Revert to the prior version and it works.

I suspect this is because Nvidia do little testing with multiple (3) monitor configurations, and in particular refuse to support non DDC CRT monitors - you know, the type that you find connected via a switchbox or even directly via RGBHV.

It's clearly a fault in the monitor detection code as it crashes when finding each monitor.

I could possibly be arsed to investigate this and verify if it actually is the case, but Nvidia refuse to answer bug reports despite having a Vista bug reporting page.

WHQL and driver testing? Wake me up when it's actually any good for anything more than an extremely average user.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

PavelZh — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:50:48 GMT

Why Intel 852GM/855GM Display Driver doesn't included in bundle driver pack for Windows 7? There is a big amount of laptops on Centrino 1 platform - I wrote this from such laptop with beta Windows 7 installed (All hardware detected properly, except VGA card - need to use Generic VGA driver). But i855G integrated graphic card supporting in Vista. Will Win7 do the same and when?

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

bve — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:21:46 GMT

After reading most the posts I'm running W7 on an older desktop, boots fine etc. I really don't know what a fast boot has to do with anything anyway. But what I did like after install windows went and found drivers for a netgear wifi card and a old HP882c printer installed them and updated it self. I'm impressed! I didn't have to go and find drivers and install then reboot. Because I just ordered an newer video card I'll install that and see what happens.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

Jan Kučera — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:08:25 GMT

"Nvidia GeForce 6150 Display" is on your list. I wonder what everything is tested, since I have GeForce 6150 LE on MSI's Media Live, and it always ends in BSOD (IRQ less or not equal) when booting having anything connected over HDMI.

It took me a while until I figured out that the Windows 7 (clean) installation won't finish until I switch to VGA (and only VGA). (by the way, the booting before BSOD shows Vista progress bar instead of the new W7 startup logo)

I would prefer working, standard VGA driver instead of BSODing one plugged in during installation.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

bve — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:50:20 GMT

After installing a GeForce 6200 on this older machine the recommended driver didn't work. VGA only. Using the nvidia forum, I found driver 7.15.10.9746 works fine. Now that its installed all the video gagets work. Some may say big deal. Everything else I use has been fine. I read where some want more tweaking, a little more control of what is installed, not installed ETC. MS has to look at millions of future installs form older systems to the newest. At work I'm using XP Pro, at home XP Home, I stayed away from Vista, from the bad press, yet our daughter on her laptop said she wounldn't go back to XP. Sorry about the rant.

This is a beta, MS wants to find out where the trouble issues are, good bad or otherwise. If your willing to load and test a beta, then be willing to try and find a fix. Yes it took me a few days in the evening to locate one but in the mean time I did come to like the features of W7, which XP doesn't have.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

fabler — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:28:28 GMT

Hi MS team...

I've installed windows 7 beta on my laptop. I've intel 915 chipset with GMA 900 graphic. I've installed GMA 900 graphic driver via windows 7 update. After that when I watch any video or start fullscreen application, my laptop got freeze and all I've to do is hard restart. Please tell me when'll I get the driver fix?

Thank you..

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

drewgrey — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 06:12:53 GMT

FileRepository\volsnap.inf_amd64_neutral_19a5c4ca3796f838\volsnap.inf was installed on my Intel pc?

I have read that some OEMs messed up by enableing intel features in an AMD machine . After this file was put on my machine by update my machine would not recover from sleep. I am running Windows 7 and because of the detailed reporting in action center I was able to find this. My tempory solution was to turn off sleep mode and all is fine but I want to know if

1- I found the culprit and

2 -what to do about it long term. Thanks

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

leolesico — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:42:05 GMT

Hi,

My print/Scan above in list HP PSC 1315 no work in Windows Seven, someone can help me

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

AndreasE — Sun, 03 May 2009 14:28:44 GMT

Greetings everybody!

For a starter, I'm on NForce 2 too and everything works well (after a little tweaking, that is)

To help the user 'kudraw', I can only encourage him to do this:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1271

This is a "best of" of the drivers which will also enable full and seamless network functionality on Windows 7. HTH!

But now to my actual problem.

I have a Logitech Communicate STX as listed above (driver version 11.1 for XP) and I'm using Windows 7 (7022 still).

The 11.5 drivers are NOT suitable for Windows 7 and the cam does not work at all.

With the very latest drivers, the cam does work but you cannot adjust anything. All control sliders: brightness, contrast, ... are greyed out and unavailable. If you live in a bright-lit room as me, you won't get a reasonably good picture out of it.

This is my report about the Communicate STX.

If you kept your 11.1 drivers, be VERY happy about it as I haven't seen them anywhere anymore.

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

macdet — Sun, 24 May 2009 11:19:04 GMT

@If you kept your 11.1 drivers, be VERY happy about it as I haven't seen them anywhere anymore.

same as I. Keep up with testing!

re: Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

wired_retired — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:08:52 GMT

1/ In your list of devices actually tested is Creative WebCam NX. I own one of these webcams and I can find no suitable driver nor can I get it to operate. Did you get it to work? If you did could you let me know how please?

2/ My old Canon Canoscan 3200F flatbed scanner, that even Vista when it started told me it was incompatible, has suddenly started to work. Have you added drivers for old scanners?