Primer on Device Support and Testing for Windows 7

As most folks (finally) get the beta and start to set aside some time to install and try out Windows 7, we thought it would be a good idea to start to talk about how we support devices through testing and work across the PC ecosystem. This is a big undertaking and one that we take very seriously. As we talked about at the PDC, this is also an area where we learned some things which we want to apply to Engineering Windows 7. While this is a massive effort across the entire Windows organization, Grant George, the VP of Test for the Windows Experience, is taking the lead in authoring this post. We think this is a deep topic and I know folks want to know more so consider this a kick-off for more to come down the road. –Steven

Devices and Drivers in Windows

One of the most important responsibilities in a release of Windows is our support of, and compatibility with, all of the devices and their associated drivers that our users have. The abstraction layer in Windows to connect software and hardware is a crucial part of the operating system. That layer is surfaced through our driver model, which provides the interface for all of our partners in the multi-faceted hardware ecosystem. Windows supports a vast range of devices today – audio devices (speakers, headsets…), display devices (monitors…), print, fax and scan devices, connectivity to digital cameras, portable media devices of all shapes, sizes and functions, and more. Windows is an open platform for companies across the globe who develop and deliver these devices to the marketplace and our users – and our job is to make sure we understand that ecosystem and those choices and verify those devices and drivers work well for our customers – which includes partnering with those device providers throughout the engineering of Windows7.

Drivers provide the interface between a device and the Windows operating system – and are citizens of the WDM (Windows Driver Model). WDM was initially created as an intermediary layer of kernel mode drivers to ease the authoring of drivers for Windows. There are different types of drivers. Class drivers (which are hardware device drivers that supports an array of devices of a similar hardware class where hardware manufacturers make their products compatible with standard protocols for interaction with the operating system) and device-specific drivers (provided by the device manufacturer for a specific device and sometimes a specific version of that device) are the two most common.

Partner Support

Support for our hardware partners comes in the form of the Windows Driver Kit (WDK) and for certification, the Windows Logo Kit (WLK). The WDK enables the development of device drivers and as of Vista replaced the previous Windows Driver Development Kit (DDK). The WDK contains all of the DDK components plus Windows Driver Foundation (WDF) and the Installable File System kit (IFS). The Driver Test Manager (DTM) is another component here, but is separate from the WDK. The Windows Logo Kit (WLK) aids in certifying devices for Windows (it contains automated tests as well as a run-time framework for those tests). These tests are run and passed by our hardware vendor partners in order to use the Microsoft “Designed for Windows™” logo on devices. This certification process helps us and our hardware partners ensure a specific level of quality and compatibility for devices interacting with the Windows operating system. Hardware devices and drivers that pass the logo kits tests qualify for the Windows logo, driver distribution on Windows Update, and can be referenced in the online Windows Marketplace.

Validation and Testing

With Windows 7 we have modified driver model validation, new and legacy device testing, and driver testing. Compared to Vista, we now place much more emphasis on validating the driver platform and verifying legacy devices and their associated drivers throughout our product engineering cycle. Data based on installed base for each device represents an integral part of testing, and we gather this data from a variety of sources including the voluntary, opt-in, anonymous telemetry in addition to sources such as sales data and IHV roadmaps. We have centralized and standardized the testing mechanics of the lab approach to this area of the product in a way that yields much earlier issue/bug discovery than in past releases. We have also ramped up our efforts to communicate platform or interface changes earlier with our external hardware partners to help them ensure their test cycles align with our schedule. In addition, we draw a more robust correlation between the real-world usage data, including recent trends, and prominence of each device and the prioritization it is given in our test labs. This is especially important for new and emerging devices that will come to market right before and just after we release Windows 7 to our customers.

Another important element in bringing a high quality experience to our Windows 7 users in device and driver connectivity and capability is the staging of our overall engineering process in Windows 7. For this release all of our engineering teams have followed a well structured and staged development process. The development/coding of new features and capabilities in Windows 7 was broken out in to 3 distinct phases (milestones) with dedicated integration and stabilization time at the end of each of these three coding phases. This included ensuring our code base remained highly stable throughout the development of Windows 7 and that our device and driver test validation was a constant part of those milestones. Larry discussed this in his post as some might recall. Program Managers, Developers and Testers all worked in super close partnership throughout the coding phases. Our work with external partners – especially our device manufacturer partners – was also enhanced through early forums we provided for them to learn about the changes in Windows 7 and also work closely with us on validation. Much more focus has been put on planning and then executing - planning the work and then working the plan. Our belief is that this yields much more predictability to developing and delivering our new features in Windows 7 both from a feature content and overall schedule standpoint. We recognize that this raised the bar on how our external partners see us execute and deliver on that plan when we say we will, but we also hope it increases their confidence in how they engage with us in validating the device experience during our development and delivery of Windows 7.

Determining Which Devices to Test

Our program management team helps us drive device market share analysis. Most of their data comes from our Customer Experience Improvement Program. This gives us data on the actual hardware in use across our customer base. For example there are over 16,000 unique 4-part hardware IDs for display devices alone. Like many things, we understand that it only takes a single device not functioning well to degrade an overall Windows experience or upgrade—we definitely want to re-enforce this shared understanding.

New devices typically have a small initial user base, but the driver will often be mostly new code (or the first time a code-base has seen a new device). As the device enters the mainstream, market share grows and most manufacturers continue to develop and improve their drivers. This is where for our customers, and our own testing, it’s important to always have the latest drivers for a given device.

Over a device’s lifetime, we work closely with our external device partners and represent as faithfully as possible in our test labs, a prioritized way of ensuring old and new devices continue to work well with Windows. By paying very close attention to trends in the market place across our device classes, we can make guided decisions in the context of these areas:

• Critical and mainstream devices we must support out-of-the-box
• Which drivers we must make available on Windows Update
• On which devices and drivers to focus our testing

Another benefit of close market tracking is creating an equivalence-based view of a device family.

Equivalence Classes

We use the notion of equivalence classes to help us define and prioritize our hardware (device) test matrix. Creating equivalence classes involves grouping things into sets based on equivalent properties across related devices. For example, imagine if we worked for a chemical company and it was our job to test a car polish additive on actual automobiles. Given a fixed test budget, we would want to maximize the number of makes and models we test our product on. We begin by analyzing the current market space so we can make the best choices for our test matrix.

Let’s say the first test car we analyze is a blue 2003 Ford Mustang. We also know that the same blue paint is used on all of Ford’s 2003 and 2004 models and is also used on all of Mazda’s 2005 models. This means our first automobile represents several entries in our table based on equivalence:

Now let’s look at a silver 2001 Mercedes C240. We know that Mercedes and Chrysler have a relationship and upon further investigation we find Chrysler used the same silver paint on their 2006 through 2009 models. Now our equivalence class based test matrix looks like this:

By carefully analyzing each actual automobile, we have established an equivalence relationship that we can leverage to maximize implicit test coverage. Testing one make and model is theoretically equivalent to testing many. Of course we recognize in the real world different companies might use different techniques for applying paint, as one variable, so there are subtleties that require additional information to property class attributes for testing purposes.

Testing computer devices is very similar. Even though there are thousands of different devices on the market, many of them share major components, are die-shrinks of a previous revision, or differ only in terms of memory, clock-rate, pixel count, connector, or even the type of heat sink. Take for example display devices. There are over 16,000 display devices on the market. But the equivalence view reveals that 90% of the market is represented by about 60 different GPUs. By adding a few more to a carefully constructed test matrix based on equivalence it is possible to represent over 99% of all GPUs. Driver writers also leverage equivalence by targeting drivers at a range of hardware. Driver install packages indicate devices they support via hardware IDs.

All modern computer devices are assigned a unique hardware ID based on the device vendor, type, and class. Most IDs (PCI, PC Card, USB, and IEEE 1394 devices) are assigned by the industry standards body associated with that device type.

Let’s look at the device ID of my display adapter:

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0611&SUBSYS_C8013842&REV_A2

If I visit PCI-SIG (the standards body associated with all PCI device ID assignment) and do a search on 10DE, I’m told I this is an NVidia PCI ID. If I look further on my system in

C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository

I can find NVidia drivers (folders that start with nv_lh). If I open one of the driver .INF files on my machine I see this tell-tale line:

NVIDIA_G92.DEV_0611.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT”

Further inspection of the driver .INF file tells me that the same G92 GPU is used for all of these devices:

• NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512
• NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
• NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2
• NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS
• NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GSO
• NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
• NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700

A bit of online research reveals other interesting information: “The 8800 GT, codenamed G92, was released on October 29, 2007. The card is the first to transition to 65 nm process, and supports PCI-Express 2.0.[13] It has a single-slot cooler as opposed to the double slot cooler on the 8800 GTS and GTX, and uses less power than GTS and GTX due to its 65 nm process.” -WikiPedia

So in theory, if I was to run a test on my display adapter, there’s a good chance I’d get the same results as I would on any of these other related devices.

Driver Goals for Windows 7

One of our primary goals for Windows 7 is compatibility with all Vista certified drivers and to ensure that people have a seamless upgrade experience. This breaks down into several requirements that guide how we test:

• Drivers for basic functionality are in-box (by in-box we mean available as part of the installation of Windows). This includes drivers for mainstream storage, network, input, and display devices so the OS can be installed and user can get online where, if needed, additional drivers can be acquire from Windows Update.
• Drivers update and/or install with minimal end user effort.
• When drivers are upgraded, there aren’t problems with the new drivers.
• Drivers are reliable.

One question we are asked about quite a bit is the availability of drivers. There are three primary reasons drivers end up looking for folks: clean installation of Windows, attaching device to a new computer, wanting the updated driver. We definitely recognize that for the readers of this blog, both as enthusiasts and often the support/IT infrastructure for corporations, friends, and families, that the ability to acquire drivers and reliably update machines is something of a “hobby” we all love to hate. We all want the latest and greatest—no more and no less.

A clean installation is one we are all definitely valuing during the beta phase of Windows 7. It should be clear that a clean install, as important as it is to many of us, is not a routine/mainstream experience. Nevertheless, the combination of in-box drivers and those available via Windows Update will serve a very broad set of PCs (for example, you should see most of the drivers installed for the new Atom-based machines if you do a clean install). On the other hand, some drivers for PCs are only available from the PC maker and for a variety of reasons are not available for download from Windows Update or even the device manufacturer’s site. For example, mobile graphics drivers are generally available only from the PC maker and not from the graphics component maker—this is a decision they make because of the way these chipsets are delivered for each PC maker.

Obviously attaching an existing device to a new PC is a common occurrence. In this case you may have long ago lost the CD/DVD that came with a device and you just plug it in (because you ignored the warning saying “please run the setup program first”). Again, our goal is to provide these via Windows Update. Often IHVs have updates or significantly large downloads that for a number of reasons are not appropriate to deliver via Windows Update. In that case we can also alert you, with a link many times, to seek the driver from the vendor of the device.

Updating drivers is something we are all familiar with as we often read “get the latest driver” to address issues. We all see this particularly in the enthusiast gamer space where newer drivers also improve performance or offer more features, in addition to improving overall. The primary way to get updated drivers is generally through optional updates in Windows Update, though again many times the latest and greatest must be downloaded directly from an IHV (independent hardware vendor) site.

Our goal is clearly to make sure that drivers for the broadest set of devices are available and high quality. There are many equal partners that contribute to delivering a PC and all the associated devices and we work hard to develop a systematic way to reach the broadest set of customers with high quality software and support.

Scale of Device and Driver Testing in Windows 7

The table below provides examples of some of the explicit devices we have directly tested thus far during the development of Windows 7. This is just a sampling of that direct testing - many more devices have been directly tested that are not shown here or are covered through equivalence classing.

This information is available in many sources, such as the WHQL web site that lists all qualified devices. For the purposes of this blog we thought it would be fun to provide a list here which we think will most certainly serve as the basis for discussion.

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 10, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 10, 2009
  my samsung Omnia /windows mobile 6.1) not work in Senen (for now )

• Anonymous
  January 10, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2009
  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)

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2009
  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.

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2009
  @marcinw -- this isn't a good place to report your experience or bugs.  Please sure the "Send Feedback" button to do that. Thank you.

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2009
  @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...

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2009
  @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?

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2009
  @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...

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2009
  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 :-)

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2009
  @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.

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2009
  @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

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2009
  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 ).

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  @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

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  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.    

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  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

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  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!

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  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.

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  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...

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  @im.thatoneguy @kudraw I have Asus P5n 650 SLI Nvidia (intel) Work perfect with Seven

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  @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.

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  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.

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  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.

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  @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

• Anonymous
  January 13, 2009
  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 :)

• Anonymous
  January 13, 2009
  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).

• Anonymous
  January 13, 2009
  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)

• Anonymous
  January 13, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 13, 2009
  @Neken: My notebook keeps blowing up air forever when hibernating (until the battery's empty), that should have been fixed before the beta.

• Anonymous
  January 13, 2009
  try here http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/category/w7itpro

• Anonymous
  January 14, 2009
  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.

• Anonymous
  January 14, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 14, 2009
  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. :)

• Anonymous
  January 14, 2009
  "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.

• Anonymous
  January 14, 2009
  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 ;).

• Anonymous
  January 15, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 15, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 17, 2009
  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?

• Anonymous
  January 21, 2009
  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.

• Anonymous
  January 22, 2009
  "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.

• Anonymous
  January 31, 2009
  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.

• Anonymous
  January 31, 2009
  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..

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2009
  FileRepositoryvolsnap.inf_amd64_neutral_19a5c4ca3796f838volsnap.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

• Anonymous
  March 04, 2009
  Hi,  My print/Scan above in list HP PSC 1315 no work in Windows Seven, someone can help me

• Anonymous
  May 02, 2009
  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.

• Anonymous
  May 23, 2009
  @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!

• Anonymous
  June 09, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 12, 2010
  please help me out i have ati 9200 graphic card and i have window 7 64bit original this is not supporting 9200 card plz give me the drivers for it

• Anonymous
  April 19, 2010
  I want to upgrade to windows 7 64 bit.  Keep getting no signed drivers were found.  this machine is supposed to be 64 bit ready.  What do I have to do to get the operating system installed!

• Anonymous
  June 16, 2010
  speakers not working since2000xp installed

• Anonymous
  January 27, 2011
  Trying to install 959 psc on laptop Windows 7  Starter.  States no driver.  Is there somewhere I can download a driver for my laptop?

• Anonymous
  January 28, 2011
  This is the same problem that was present when I purchased Vista for my new Dell and a new C5180 from HP two and half years ago. All three items were new and it took a special tech from HP to set it up.  Dell and Microsoft can do better than this;  Now with an upgrade to Windows 7 there is no compatible download for the scanner portion of the C5180 again.  The mumbo jumbo at the top of this page is not true technical help at all -  then you write: For the purposes of this blog we thought it would be FUN to provide a list here which we think will most certainly serve as the basis for discussion.  Guess what? It aint fun.

• Anonymous
  May 30, 2014
  Why can't my Lenovo computer communicate with 5650 lexmark printer

• Anonymous
  February 24, 2015
  cannot find H/P Deskjet 2510 All-in-one series on above chart...what gives?? need to use my scanner!

• Anonymous
  October 21, 2015
  My HP Deskjet 2510 PRINT/SCAN/COPY is not printing/scanning/copying. Please help me fix this problem.