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[TheBoy]

My old desktop, slightly older than my laptop (Vista era), why not, let it upgrade to MS's latest and greatest.

I found out after the "successful" upgrade that it had an ATI card, so no more dual monitor for me, and AMD being the scum of the earth, claim its compatible, but only by using MS basic driver (hence 1 monitor only). No intention of creating a driver. But then this is AMD (why oh why oh why do people buy their junk?).

Never fear, I'll use the rollback facility . Only it wouldn't  .

OK, lets rebuild to W7 from scratch, sigh.  Now I cant get Windows update to work. A whole day lost



If that wasn't enough, I've discovered an incompatibility between some very old code I wrote (VB6, wriiten in around 1997/8), and I suspect to debug it, I'll have to try to "encourage" VB6 to go one Win10...  ...seeing as it was shitty under W7 (hence I have 1 XP machine for maintaining my bro's POS stuff), that could be tomorrow lost as well.

Grrrr.

Still, at least Win10 installed successfully on his (defficult to get support/drivers) Aures Yuno tills, so that one headache gone

[Andy H]

If you, of all people, are struggling to keep Microsoft's mongrel latest and greatest working then what hope is there for the rest of us.

Note to self: make sure that wireless is switched OFF if I ever have to boot the win7 partition on this laptop ever again.........

[Broomies Mate]

As TB said though, it's not the fault of Microsoft, it's the complete lack of support from the hardware manufacturer.  Afterall, if they won't develop new drivers for an OS, the end-user will be forced to go and buy new hardware to replace it - from nVidia, with any sense! 

[TheBoy]

from nVidia, with any sense! 

TBH, the on-CPU GPUs from Intel CPUs from the last 5yrs are more than enough for my needs, as I don't game on PCs.  And not needing a video card makes the Intel CPU cheaper than AMD's junk, more reliable, more energy efficient, and quieter.  I thank that's what the office self-abusers at work would call a win-win-win situation

IF I needed discrete graphics in a desktop, NVidia would be my first choice though .  If I needed discrete graphics in a laptop, I'd buy a desktop instead

[TheBoy]

Win7 rebuilt again, not put the Office suite on yet. Updates now going on after a 5hr numbercrunching session by the update service.  Once done, I'll get Office back on, then get updates on that.

I think it was just too many updates for Windows Update to deal with, as Win7 is getting long in the tooth (as is Office 2010).  I'm sure I had Office 2013 on it previously, but buggered if I can find a licence I'm not using elsewhere. Time to abuse the HUP scheme again methinks

[Kevin Wood]

As TB said though, it's not the fault of Microsoft, it's the complete lack of support from the hardware manufacturer.  Afterall, if they won't develop new drivers for an OS, the end-user will be forced to go and buy new hardware to replace it - from nVidia, with any sense! 

You could argue that Microsoft don't help by redefining what a device driver is on a regular basis. 

Hardware manufacturers are never going to spend much effort re-writing drivers supporting hardware that old, although you will probably get bug fixes to the existing drivers if nobody moves the goal posts radically. Their revenue comes from selling the hardware, after all. Using Windows means replacing hardware long before its' actually end-of-life these days.

[Andy H]

As TB said though, it's not the fault of Microsoft, it's the complete lack of support from the hardware manufacturer.  Afterall, if they won't develop new drivers for an OS, the end-user will be forced to go and buy new hardware to replace it - from nVidia, with any sense! 

You could argue that Microsoft don't help by redefining what a device driver is on a regular basis. 

Hardware manufacturers are never going to spend much effort re-writing drivers supporting hardware that old, although you will probably get bug fixes to the existing drivers if nobody moves the goal posts radically. Their revenue comes from selling the hardware, after all. Using Windows means replacing hardware long before its' actually end-of-life these days.

A 3 year replacement cycle suits Microsoft and the hardware manufacturers. The GPU manufacturers (particularly nVidia) refuse to publish their protocols which makes it very difficult for a third party to write decent drivers.

Open standards are the future. Any organisation that hides behind 'IP' (intellectual property) to try and disguise what a pile of poo their software really is deserves all the grief that comes their way.....

[Kevin Wood]

A 3 year replacement cycle suits Microsoft and the hardware manufacturers. The GPU manufacturers (particularly nVidia) refuse to publish their protocols which makes it very difficult for a third party to write decent drivers.

Open standards are the future. Any organisation that hides behind 'IP' (intellectual property) to try and disguise what a pile of poo their software really is deserves all the grief that comes their way.....

Hence Microsoft have realised they now have to give it away.

[TheBoy]

A 3 year replacement cycle suits Microsoft and the hardware manufacturers. The GPU manufacturers (particularly nVidia) refuse to publish their protocols which makes it very difficult for a third party to write decent drivers.

Open standards are the future. Any organisation that hides behind 'IP' (intellectual property) to try and disguise what a pile of poo their software really is deserves all the grief that comes their way.....

Hence Microsoft have realised they now have to give it away.

Really? Last time I checked, Windows was still a commercial product, and at retail prices, not cheap (though cheaper than many).

[Andy H]

A 3 year replacement cycle suits Microsoft and the hardware manufacturers. The GPU manufacturers (particularly nVidia) refuse to publish their protocols which makes it very difficult for a third party to write decent drivers.

Open standards are the future. Any organisation that hides behind 'IP' (intellectual property) to try and disguise what a pile of poo their software really is deserves all the grief that comes their way.....

Hence Microsoft have realised they now have to give it away.

Really? Last time I checked, Windows was still a commercial product, and at retail prices, not cheap (though cheaper than many).

On this occasion I was referring to the graphics drivers. It has suited MS for many years that the GPU manufacturers put all their efforts in producing drivers for the latest version of windows while refusing to release information to allow others to write drivers.

Microsoft are now in the position that they don't have enough information to write anything better than a 'basic' driver and the manufacturer has no incentive to write a new driver for a discontinued product.

[TheBoy]

MS have only ever written basic drivers, with the advanced drivers coming from the OE's and then often being in the Windows media.

2 major driver revisions (and 1 minor) in over 10yrs is quite low in IT terms.

Most silicon hardware providers try to keep it proprietary, even those based on supposedly open (but not free) designs such as ARM.  Additionally, its probably now a too large task for an individual to write high performance video/audio drivers, so even if the info was available, getting sufficient traction to get such a project started would be difficult.

In the case of graphics cards, there has been virtually no significant improvements in the last 10+ years, unlike the rest of the technology sector.  A midrange video card from several years ago would still embarrass a budget card now.