Question regarding the "Driver" d/l's available on

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CityK

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Sep 2, 2002
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On visiting Windows Update page, you may recieve an option to download a driver older then your currently installed version. Is the reason for this because the current set you have installed aren't WHQL'd, whereas the older ones MS offers up are? (Although I'm pretty sure the sound drivers I have installed are MS approved, but Windows Update site certainly thinks I should install a much older version.)
 
I'm not sure about the specifics, but the general thrust is to make it impossible to manufacture any hardware without having a friendly relatonship with Microsoft. Bit by bit, they are working towards this. The time will come - not too far away now - when Windows refuses to load any driver that does not have the mark of Redmond on its hand or on its head.
 
On a related note, be cautious downloading the Microsoft sound drivers for your nForce 2 boards (in my case, Abit NF-7S). The Microsoft sound drivers totally messed up the onboard sound. I can no longer open the nVidia SoundStorm control panel, and ocassionally a very loud thud will be emitted from the sound port to my tiny computer speakers. There was no way I can uninstall the Microsoft sound drivers. So in the end, I reformat and re-install WinBlows.

Cheers,
Edward
 
You may have met the bug we have met several times, Edward. It occurrs with the combination of an Nforce sound chipset and one or more of the reasonably recent Media Player versions. There is, so far as we know, no fix for it except to not use Media Player. The version that ships with Win 2000 is OK, AFIK. I think it's all the later ones that stuff up, but I'm not sure of exact versions. Nvidia do not offer any fix either.
 
I don't trust Windows upgrade for driver upgrades: I've been burned too many times. I avoid them like the plague. If I need a driver upgrade, I go to the manufacturer (not M$). If I have no problems then drivers like BIOS's are not touched regardless of their source.
 
I too ignore them, but it just seems odd that Windows Update is offering (for example) a v3.xx driver when I'm using a much more recent v5.xx driver.

I should, however, also report that just 3 or 4 weeks ago I had a successful experience based upon MS offered drivers. A system I had assembled, and that utilised a basic C-Media based sound card, was having all kinds of problems with the LAN, Video and mouse. Toubleshooting narrowed the problem down to several conflicts/incompatibilities between the C-Media drivers and the others. Removing the actual C-Media offered drivers and trying the MS offered ones instead succesfully resolved the problems.
 
Generally speaking, you just have to watch yourself on the Microsoft-supplied drivers. They're usually acceptable and stable if you don't try to use more than the basic functions of a device. They're also usually very dated.

Any device where I already use a Microsoft-supplied driver, I always update to the latest version on update, and have never had a problem. For those devices where I use the manufacturer's driver, I stick to the manudacturer's driver.
 
On the other hand, I've had Windows Update find drivers for hardware I couldn't identify.

So it's not entirely a bad thing.
 
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