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Microsoft to Turn to Driver Quality Ratings System
QT writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Microsoft is finally trying to do something about PC driver problems. A new crash-report-driven Driver Quality Rating system will be used in Windows Vista to rate drivers. Drivers that rate poorly in real world use by users will lose their logo certification status, which would be bad news for OEMs and the device manufacturers themselves. Maybe now submitting crash reports will feel more useful? This is long overdue."
They must provide specs.
I will give bad feedback to all vendors that develop drivers which aren't standard / poorly integrated with the OS.
This include any driver which add a tray icon app. Do we realy need that each wireless card vendor bundle its own wireless configuration software?
Yes, I know you don't have to use it, but most people think they do. Try to explain to the average joe why there is TWO icons displaying the status of his wireless connection. Or that changing the color settings of the monitor depends on the video card driver.
When I bought my cheap 3.5'' USB SD/CF card reader, I didn't know that it needed a special software to work. At last in Vista I will be able to mod them -1 bad driver.
Do you really care if your music CD has a "Vista Compatible" logo on it?
Thought not.
This is different for say, a network card. THAT you would care about.
So, the RIAA types can do as they very well please with their driver malware seeing as it has zero impact on them if they lose a rating they never really had in the first place.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The answer to your question is simple: It is technically impossible without fundamentally changing all PC hardware.
Some driver bugs can be averted by moving drivers into user mode - this is especially true for drivers that do not talk to hardware directly, but these are not interested cases. Drivers which do not talk to hardware (e.g. drivers for USB devices) should not be in the kernel in the first place, so it is just a case of bad design.
The interesting and important drivers are ones that do talk to hardware. Unfortunately they are the ones that cannot be made completely safe. A driver can program its DMA controller to overwrite the entire system RAM, or it can set the device up to lock the bus. There are ways to avoid these problems (with significant increase in cost and complexity), but not in PC hardware - it is simply not worth it. Would you rather have a PC which hangs up once every week, or one that costs ten times more ? If you answered the latter, then you don't need a PC!
The subject of microkernels has been discussed to death. I think that everybody agrees that microkernels are slower, so it becomes a question of economics again: People would you rather have a PC which crashes once every week that one which is twice slower.
Lastly, I am going to say that in my opinion microkernels increase complexity disproportionately, and complexity leads to bugs, so they are not a scalable solution. Of course this point is debatable.
No. The feedback you're providing to Microsoft is not on a whim. They're not basing driver quality ratings on how many angry E-mails they've received; they're basing them on how many automated Windows Error Reporting messages they receive, which drivers are the most common offenders, and whether or not these drivers are all experiencing similar failures.
Ever used Microsoft's "Crash Analysis" tool? These Crash Analysis reports are what they're using to guage driver quality. If you've never used the tool, take a look. It's very handy for figuring out exactly why you're getting a BSOD when you insert your El-Cheapo Brand-Y USB Modem. http://oca.microsoft.com/
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If it was almost anyone else, there wouldn't be any argument. History, in the sense that Microsoft has always worked to blame others (Lotus, Corel, Netscape, so many printer manufacturers) for problems that are caused by Microsoft policies, works against trusting them:
Like I said, anyone else, this wouldn't be an issue. But they LIE so many times. Look at the latest spyware - the WGA tool that phones home every day, and all the lies they told about it, and continue to tell about it. This is someone you'd trust?
I don't know if anyone else has had this problem, but at the moment Window Update driver recomendation sucks.
I've never updated my computer drivers via Windows Update. My boss recently asked me why and I showed him on a spare laptop we had.
First of all, Windows kept saying that there where updated drivers for the onboard Realtek AC97 sound card. Problem was, the updated drivers where for the C-Media AC97 drivers. The sound card didn't work when I updated them to the ones Windows recommended.
Then (the big one) Windows kept saying there was an updated driver for the USB mouse I was using (A A-Open Optical Openeye Wheelmouse). The driver it recommended was a A4-Tech driver or something.
Oh boy, did I have fun after that was installed.
I installed the recommended mouse driver and restarted. Instant blue-screen. So I tried to get into safe mode to rollback the driver. Blue screen while booting into safe mode. So now I have to try and recover (or reformat) this laptop due to a dodgey windows update.
My boss was amazed at what Windows Update had done. Why does Windows say there are updated drivers available that don't work? I know better than to trust WU for drivers, but I still have the average home user coming up to me asking why their computer has gone bad after loading the latest windows updates (I tell everyone who asks, only use WU for the critical windows updates, that's all)
Who is to blame for this? The average computer user has no idea what devices are in their computer (Hell, most of them still call the moniter the computer and the computer "the box"). Why does Windows seem to ignore what's listed as installed and working in Device Manager?
This space for rent
As previously reported before on slashdot (too lazy to references), the Microsoft Anti-spyware software uses the same kind of community ratings, and crazy ratings were observed too (some spyware were slowly declassified as spyware, because users kept clicking on OK, just to have their software work).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]