Old driver support removed from newer Win10 builds?
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This is no doubt an attempt to bolster new pc sales
And most probably also an attempt to lower costs incurred to support their own products. But in doing so, they are losing what could have been loyal long term customers.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
If that's their approach, I suspect a lot of people will simply revert back to an older OS, if that's an option to them, and keep using it until the hardware dies. Then they'll purchase something that was sold with Windows 10 already on it (so it damned well better be compatible).
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Before nuking the OS next time, I'd suggest trying a driver download directly from AMD first. The windows GPU driver installer has issues around fringe cases, and is especially eager to break stuff in service pack updates. I wouldn't be surprised if it attempted to install the current "universal" AMD driver; despite that driver no longer working for your buddy's ancient GPU.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
I must've skipped that in my initial post - yes, I did nuke the existing driver as thoroughly as I could, and downloaded the latest from the manufacturer--which in this case turned out to date from 2009 (!)... In fact I always go to the OEM's site first for drivers, rather than using those from Windows Update, as those tend to be a few versions behind (although in this case...you'd think they'd have the latest already, since it's this old). The end result was the same--even though Device Manager correctly identified it by name, the Metrofied portion still referred to it as "Basic Display". First time I've seen different parts of the OS disagreeing with each other.
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I must've skipped that in my initial post - yes, I did nuke the existing driver as thoroughly as I could, and downloaded the latest from the manufacturer--which in this case turned out to date from 2009 (!)... In fact I always go to the OEM's site first for drivers, rather than using those from Windows Update, as those tend to be a few versions behind (although in this case...you'd think they'd have the latest already, since it's this old). The end result was the same--even though Device Manager correctly identified it by name, the Metrofied portion still referred to it as "Basic Display". First time I've seen different parts of the OS disagreeing with each other.
I'm surprised it dropped out of the main driver that long ago. I'd've expected at least 4 years of nominal support (in the main driver even if no longer an optimizing target) based on my experience with nvidia drivers. I was under the impression the ATI/AMD kept similar support lifespans, if only to avoid being beaten over the head with the shorter number by the competition's marketing dept.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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If that's their approach, I suspect a lot of people will simply revert back to an older OS, if that's an option to them, and keep using it until the hardware dies. Then they'll purchase something that was sold with Windows 10 already on it (so it damned well better be compatible).
dandy72 wrote:
Then they'll purchase something that was sold with Windows 10 already on it (so it damned well better be compatible)
It'll be compatible, but for how long? My Lenovo laptop was abandoned by the manufacture when windows 8.1 came out -- I bought it new the year before, when 8.0 and the laptop model were both brand spanking new. They decided it was too much trouble to write 8.1 drivers for it, so abandoned it. Make no assumptions about longevity of hardware and OS compatibility.
I live in Oregon, and I'm an engineer.
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dandy72 wrote:
Then they'll purchase something that was sold with Windows 10 already on it (so it damned well better be compatible)
It'll be compatible, but for how long? My Lenovo laptop was abandoned by the manufacture when windows 8.1 came out -- I bought it new the year before, when 8.0 and the laptop model were both brand spanking new. They decided it was too much trouble to write 8.1 drivers for it, so abandoned it. Make no assumptions about longevity of hardware and OS compatibility.
I live in Oregon, and I'm an engineer.
Wow. Luckily (?) I hardly ever buy laptops. I still buy/build my own PCs (of desktop variety) from parts, which tend to have more mainstream drivers than OEMs, who generally have their own and who have no incentive to keep supporting them across multiple OS versions.
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Had a buddy of mine bring me an almost 10 year old laptop this weekend, that had come with Windows 7, but had been upgraded to 10 back when MS was pushing hard to get people to upgrade. The laptop can do 1600x900, but ever since the 1709 upgrade, his resolution dropped to 1024x768. The only available options in the resolution dropdown were 800x600, 1024x768, and 1152x864. No amount of fiddling with the video driver, including fully uninstalling and reinstalling it, solved anything. Then I realized something I've never seen before: Device Manager correctly identified the video chipset as a Radeon 3200 HD, *but* the now-Metrofied (my word) Settings page, where the user gets to choose his resolution, simply reported back "Microsoft Basic Video Display"...or whatever the lowest common denominator is called...as if there was a disconnect between the two. Device Manager reported one thing, but that wasn't brought forward in the resolution selection dialog. System Restore worked, according to the laptop's owner (restoring to a point in time before installing 1709)--that is, the correct resolution was selected and everything was back to normal...although I didn't see myself while it was back in this state to confirm whether the Metrofied Settings page was then showing the correct chipset name rather than the basic driver. However, as soon as 1709 reinstalled itself a few days later, the problem came back. As I said, the machine is very old, so it wouldn't surprise me if MS removed support for this particular chipset starting with 1709, and maybe it couldn't figure out what to do with the driver that was already installed/reported back by Device Manager...but that was a rather strange state. Anyway, long story short: The guy already hated Windows 10, so I suggested to simply reinstall that. A clean install, and at least 12 reboots later (until Windows Update came with nothing else to offer), he was back in business... Bonus: Apparently his hard drive died a few years ago and he had it replaced with an SSD, so even though the machine's quite old, it's still quite fast (especially with a fresh Win7 install). My point? I had initially set out to describe what a full Windows 7 re-installation process looks like nowadays, but this is already getting way too long, so that'll have to be a story for another day/thread. Suffice it to say that I'm still scratching my head over this disconnect between Device Manager and the Metrofied resolution picker. I dread the day where *everything* in Control Panel has
Had the same problem. Reverted to the old driver via Device Manager and now all good.
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Had the same problem. Reverted to the old driver via Device Manager and now all good.
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Had a buddy of mine bring me an almost 10 year old laptop this weekend, that had come with Windows 7, but had been upgraded to 10 back when MS was pushing hard to get people to upgrade. The laptop can do 1600x900, but ever since the 1709 upgrade, his resolution dropped to 1024x768. The only available options in the resolution dropdown were 800x600, 1024x768, and 1152x864. No amount of fiddling with the video driver, including fully uninstalling and reinstalling it, solved anything. Then I realized something I've never seen before: Device Manager correctly identified the video chipset as a Radeon 3200 HD, *but* the now-Metrofied (my word) Settings page, where the user gets to choose his resolution, simply reported back "Microsoft Basic Video Display"...or whatever the lowest common denominator is called...as if there was a disconnect between the two. Device Manager reported one thing, but that wasn't brought forward in the resolution selection dialog. System Restore worked, according to the laptop's owner (restoring to a point in time before installing 1709)--that is, the correct resolution was selected and everything was back to normal...although I didn't see myself while it was back in this state to confirm whether the Metrofied Settings page was then showing the correct chipset name rather than the basic driver. However, as soon as 1709 reinstalled itself a few days later, the problem came back. As I said, the machine is very old, so it wouldn't surprise me if MS removed support for this particular chipset starting with 1709, and maybe it couldn't figure out what to do with the driver that was already installed/reported back by Device Manager...but that was a rather strange state. Anyway, long story short: The guy already hated Windows 10, so I suggested to simply reinstall that. A clean install, and at least 12 reboots later (until Windows Update came with nothing else to offer), he was back in business... Bonus: Apparently his hard drive died a few years ago and he had it replaced with an SSD, so even though the machine's quite old, it's still quite fast (especially with a fresh Win7 install). My point? I had initially set out to describe what a full Windows 7 re-installation process looks like nowadays, but this is already getting way too long, so that'll have to be a story for another day/thread. Suffice it to say that I'm still scratching my head over this disconnect between Device Manager and the Metrofied resolution picker. I dread the day where *everything* in Control Panel has
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I went though those motions. Deleted from Device Manager, downloaded and installed the latest from the manufacturer's own site--the last update to it was in 2009 (!)...Even though the driver installer didn't report any failure, and it was identified again in Device Manager using the correct name, the resolution selection screen still identified it as Basic Display.
Did you had any previous manufacturer's software version? Like the ATI Catalyst CC for AMD Video Cards, or NVidia's CPanel. If so, try uninstalling them before installing the latest sw from the official site. That did the trick for me on a HD radeon 6500
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Did you had any previous manufacturer's software version? Like the ATI Catalyst CC for AMD Video Cards, or NVidia's CPanel. If so, try uninstalling them before installing the latest sw from the official site. That did the trick for me on a HD radeon 6500