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Thinks Microsoft will finally update the installer?
- Thread starter Phranq
- Start date
JustLong
Gawd
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Phranq said:
I don't there has ever been a windows release that didn't have support for new hardware. You can always look at the HCL for Win2000 and Windows XP to see how much hardware support MS added between those two releases.
True, however, it would be nice to see SPs that do provide some additional drivers, specifically SATA, or any other necessary install drivers (additional NIC support?). It would reduce a lot of install issues if someone with a slipstreamed SP CD didn't have to muck with those drivers on install, is that possible?Ranma_Sao said:This is a rant thread, and I usually don't respond, but what the hell.
How do you expect windows to magically get drivers in a secure fashion, for hardware that hasn't shipped yet? XP shipped in 2001, and SATA wasn't out then.
I don't think that's asking too much since these are often WHQL certified, so they are already "approved" and setup to download via windowsupdate.
edit:
That'd be nice too, a service pack of sorts for WHQL drivers...
Whatsisname
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they might if you learn to proofread and type proper english. How the hell do you expect them to write drivers for technologies that come out years after the OS release?
Phranq said:
heh, it was a joke anyway, but they are still selling XP right now and if you buy it, it won't support the newest hardware. I'm not talking about a 3 year old copy here, I'm talking about if I go to a store and buy Windows XP in the year 2005 it should have been updated, maybe that's just opinion.
You can add drivers to the CD using the slipstream and unattend.txt OEMDRIVERSPATH settings. The service pack does update the drivers, however to known good drivers. (Drivers that have been tested way beyound WHQL certs...) I agree the driver scenario isn't as good as it could be, but it is getting better.
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_25A3.DeviceDesc="Intel(R) 6300ESB Ultra ATA Storage/SPhoenix86 said:So are there SATA WHQL drivers in SP2?
See this wasn't *that* bad of a thread to reply too.
ATA Controller - 25A3"
Is supported out of the box in XPSP2. That appears to be the only one though.
Edit: How I found this, in case people care:
Goto the \%windir%\Infs and findstr /i sata *.inf
Maybe you should research the issue a little bit concerning SATA. The onboard Intel controllers have support in XP already, out of the box, even so with the non-SP1 version. Maybe it's the AMD side of the house that didn't get their specs and drivers to Microsoft in time?
But no, of course not....is SOOO much easier to blame Microsoft all the time.
But no, of course not....is SOOO much easier to blame Microsoft all the time.
Phranq said:
When a new piece of hardware comes out, sometimes it's supported by the manufacturer's existing drivers, sometimes not. Unfortunately, when new drivers are required, the disks that come with that hardware have to be used. In the case of drive controllers, the manufacturer should have included a driver disk that you can use while installing Windows. (or, if you have another system you can create a new install disk, including those drivers)
As far as general drivers in Windows goes...
With each OS, and with each service pack, the drivers on the install CDs are updated.
As others have said, if you have an older Windows install CD you can merge (slipstream) the service pack and create a new install CD that contains the updates.
- For drivers that were not submitted\validated in time for service packs, theyre available via Windows Update, or from the manufacturer.
- For drivers that are for rare hardware, theyd still be on Windows Update, assuming theyd been submitted and validated. Theres only so much space on a CD though, so not all old and rare hardware can be placed on installation disks.
- For drivers that were never submitted\validated, they are available from the manufacturer.
In any case, those drivers can be added to your install CD
One thing I would reiterate though is that the PC market place is a vast place. The only people that are going to be able to write drivers well for a piece of hardware are those that are closely related to that hardware.
What do I mean by well? Drivers that are reliable, fully featured, have good performance, and are timely to market. Even if all the technical resources were made available by the hardware manufacture, think of the situation where a single company was responsible for writing the drivers for competing products. Stability and features go without saying, but imagine if one driver took a couple extra weeks to make, or if one was 5% slower for a given task (given two similar pieces of hardware), accusations would fly and conspiracy theorist would write novels.
So, each manufacturer is responsible for their own hardware, and the software that directly interfaces with that hardware to expose it to the world (drivers). So what role does Microsoft play? The end goal is that we make drivers more easily accessible to our users. This involves putting them in the various places, like on Windows CDs, Windows Update, XPEs driver database, etc. However, we cant put our customers at risk simply by pushing out anything the hardware vendors send to us though, that could cause enormous security and stability issues. Beyond security and stability of customer systems, theres also the expectation that Windows Updates should never break systems in any way. Thats where WHQL comes in (Windows Hardware Quality Labs), they specialize in testing hardware and drivers in a variety of ways. Before a driver gets sent out by Microsoft (or put on CD), it must pass all the validations that WHQL requires.
Super Mario
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djnes said:
No they don't as far as I've noticed. Even with a Windows XP slipstreamed with SP1 CD, I still had to insert a floppy to load the Intel 82801ER SATA controller drivers for the Windows XP installation to recognize my SATA HDDs. However, I have not tried yet with Windows XP SP2, because I assumed you still had to load the drivers on a floppy to get the startup to recognize the SATA HDDs, so I did hit F6 and load the drivers on a clean install of Windows XP w/SP2 slipstreamed CD.
Super Mario said:
If you enabled the RAID functionality then you'd need drivers. But, that's a worthless feature anyway, so not many of us use it anymore. That being said, you do not need to load any special drivers to use SATA HDDs on an Intel board in a non-RAID config. Might want to read up on it a bit more before you go around correcting people.
Well, I didn't know MS was adding WHQL drivers to the SPs. Of course timing is keenly relelvant as to it's inclusion, but that good to know...
Phranq, so in reality what you want is already available (as much as possible). If you buy a XPSP2 CD it does have drivers that were available at the time of release of SP2.
Phranq, so in reality what you want is already available (as much as possible). If you buy a XPSP2 CD it does have drivers that were available at the time of release of SP2.
Super Mario
Limp Gawd
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I didn't have RAID enabled and I still needed to load the drivers with Windows XP SP1 installation. I'm not trying to correct anyone, I am just stating what I observed because honestly, Windows XP SP1 wouldn't recognize my SATA hard drives until I inserted a floppy and loaded the drivers during Windows installation. I suppose it's different with every motherboard. I know on one motherboard I had, you could map the SATA to IDE ports and you wouldn't need any special drivers, but you would also lose the functionality of one IDE channel.
Super Mario said:
It's a stated fact that Intel's onboard controllers have built in drivers. You may have had an odd setting in your BIOS, or something set wrong then. Every Intel SATA board I've worked on had three options:
1) RAID: usless, always disabled
2) SATA Only: Usless as well, because I didn't own an SATA CD-ROM drive.
3) Enhanced/Combined, etc where you lost one IDE channel.
Option three is the only method I could consider for the stated reasons. No idea how you had your's set, but every mobo from every manufacturer I've worked on gave you those three options. And that is when you do not need to load any drivers.
Phoenix86 said:Well, I didn't know MS was adding WHQL drivers to the SPs. Of course timing is keenly relelvant as to it's inclusion, but that good to know...
Phranq, so in reality what you want is already available (as much as possible). If you buy a XPSP2 CD it does have drivers that were available at the time of release of SP2.
Keep in mind what Ranma_Sao said as well. While WHQL verification is the minimum bar for being distributed by Microsoft, the drivers put in install CDs have a much higher bar.
I dont know what requirements the Windows team puts on drivers to be included on the CD, but I would presume that the drivers must have already been available via Windows update without issues being reported. When the service packs go out to a couple hundred million systems, you have to be extremely careful about what goes into them.
I know its pretty common for hardware vendors put out drivers and to keep updating them until they think they have performance\stability\features where they think they should be. At that time the drivers will be submitted to WHQL, and it gets taken from there...
In other words, there is often a lag between when the drivers are originally created, and when we get them, then there can be an additional lag before inclusion into service packs and such. These lag times are there to help make sure there are no issues with the drivers before they get rolled out to a wider audience.
For example, can you imagine the damage that would be caused if a disk controller driver caused a bug check (BSOD) when performing a certain action when the system included a conflicting network card driver? Or the damage that would be caused if a driver unintentionally had hostile code or some form of virus?