Driver support in Win7 when there is no official driver support???

[koretex]

So Im trying to get Win7 RC1 x64 to work on my laptop with a Radeon x700 in it and can't seem to find any working drivers or "trick" the system into using drivers. Thus I am stuck with the "default graphic card" (or whatevers its called) crap. Everything else works great on the laptop except that.

So has anyone found workarounds to this yet?

 

[rpchip]

Have you tried downloading windows updates yet? You should get vidio drivers from there.

 

[Joe Average]

If that laptop came with Vista from the factory, use the manufacturer's Vista driver (meaning the manufacturer of the laptop). If that's not the case, meaning if the laptop is so old (and an x700 realistically almost too damned old for Vista or Windows 7 unfortunately, even though it is a DX9 part which is what Aero requires). Apparently laptops had those starting in mid-2004 so the laptop is probably about that old as well, so you're pushing your luck running it even though Windows 7 can run better on older hardware than Vista typically does.

So that pretty much ensures that since the laptop is so old, there's no manufacturer's drivers for it for Vista. Your only recourse now is to find some hacked drivers - and by hacked I mean the .inf files are hacked to allow for installation of the latest drivers onto the older cards/chips like that x700. It doesn't mean someone goes in and alters the actual drivers, all it means is that the PCI device codes for your particular card/chip are added to the installation .inf files so you don't get that dreaded "There are no supported products in your system" bullshit error.

Radeon hardware shares drivers just as GeForce hardware does - ATI and Nvidia just strip out support for the older cards/chips so the drivers won't install by removing the PCI device IDs for older hardware, that's all. So you can find the "fixed" .inf files and just insert them into the installation files and get the stuff installed.

Sounds like you need to locate some modified Windows 7 drivers, that's all.

Windows Update will not have proper drivers either because that card is so old and the drivers that Microsoft gets from ATI are the same thing: modified to not even "see" such older hardware and therefore leaving you without any proper video support. You'll need to track down a modified .inf someplace. Try the Rage3D forums for more information, www.rage3d.com.

 

[koretex]

If that laptop came with Vista from the factory, use the manufacturer's Vista driver (meaning the manufacturer of the laptop). If that's not the case, meaning if the laptop is so old (and an x700 realistically almost too damned old for Vista or Windows 7 unfortunately, even though it is a DX9 part which is what Aero requires). Apparently laptops had those starting in mid-2004 so the laptop is probably about that old as well, so you're pushing your luck running it even though Windows 7 can run better on older hardware than Vista typically does.

So that pretty much ensures that since the laptop is so old, there's no manufacturer's drivers for it for Vista. Your only recourse now is to find some hacked drivers - and by hacked I mean the .inf files are hacked to allow for installation of the latest drivers onto the older cards/chips like that x700. It doesn't mean someone goes in and alters the actual drivers, all it means is that the PCI device codes for your particular card/chip are added to the installation .inf files so you don't get that dreaded "There are no supported products in your system" bullshit error.

Radeon hardware shares drivers just as GeForce hardware does - ATI and Nvidia just strip out support for the older cards/chips so the drivers won't install by removing the PCI device IDs for older hardware, that's all. So you can find the "fixed" .inf files and just insert them into the installation files and get the stuff installed.

Sounds like you need to locate some modified Windows 7 drivers, that's all.

Windows Update will not have proper drivers either because that card is so old and the drivers that Microsoft gets from ATI are the same thing: modified to not even "see" such older hardware and therefore leaving you without any proper video support. You'll need to track down a modified .inf someplace. Try the Rage3D forums for more information, www.rage3d.com.

Got to be one of the most informative answers to a thread I have ever made....thanks! I tried to mod the drivers myself with the laptop driver modding tool thingy, that I now forget whats its called and I'm at work not home. That didn't work though, I even got it from rage3d...dont know why I didnt think to go to their forums....doh!

and fyi I got the laptop May '06, and hardware wise it meets the required specs for Win7 and is running great with drivers for everything except video