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Listing of Vista Drivers

Posted by kdawson on from the crib-sheet dept.

RadarSync writes to plug their page of links to Vista drivers. Listed are many drivers that Microsoft doesn't have and that aren't easily found on the manufacturer's sites. For Intel alone, 364 drivers are currently linked.

21 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Can become outdated fast by aliatgb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The site is a good idea in theory but I would not recommend anyone to a site like this one for fear that they could be downloading outdated drivers since the manufactures site lists the current ones anyway. Its really not that hard to find drivers for your hardware from the manufactures site anyway and its not like this site lists anything out of the ordinary or hard to find.

    1. Re:Can become outdated fast by deft · · Score: 3, Insightful

      the problem is right now that these can't be found. And, they may be linking to pages that are updated themselves.

      so, whent he problem that they cant be found is outdated, you wont have to go to this site anyways. i dont think this is intended to do anything but address the current problem.

      --

      There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
    2. Re:Can become outdated fast by echo_kmem · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Its really not that hard to find drivers for your hardware from the manufactures site anyway I would see that to be the case when buying whole systems from HP, Dell, Etc. Just as much the same if you buy Brand name parts all the time. But when you work on machines for people who go cheaper and buy off-brand name equipment, then you start spending Hours looking for a driver for their sound card. Also, as another Comment said here, This list appears to serve to point out a problem with the OS than a way for Consumers to easily find Drivers.
    3. Re:Can become outdated fast by iamacat · · Score: 4, Interesting

      While I hate Windows, I actually wish this problem was not so easy for Microsoft to solve. Since they are signing all drivers, they could just determine device's PCI/USB/etc signature and fetch the driver from their website. The problem is that now all the hardware in the world can only be created with Microsoft's approval, which is way too much control for a single company.

    4. Re:Can become outdated fast by empaler · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm sorry to say that yesterday I had to resort to such a site to get my Lexmark x1130 drivers. I just couldn't get to them on Lexmark's site, and I didn't have time to horse around.
      In Lexmark's defence, I'd just like to say that the site seemed slowed, possibly by DOS attacks. Either that or they suck.
      At any rate, I ain't getting me another Lexmark any time soon - too bad for them, as I'm in the market for a fast document scanner... (Any good ideas? :-P )

    5. Re:Can become outdated fast by jackharrer · · Score: 3, Informative

      I updated my friends desktop (HP Pavillion) with Vista. There were no drivers for AC'97! They got to be joking!
      At least HP has shown they care and I was able to download them from their site. Plus ATI drivers that hardly worked, and some minor problems with WIFI (detected as something totally different, but worked!).
      I had less problems with Mandriva on my new laptop. Everything worked out of the box. Including Compiz and Xgl.

      --

      "an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
    6. Re:Can become outdated fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
      "The problem is that now all the hardware in the world can only be created with Microsoft's approval, which is way too much control for a single company."

      ... You mean like Mac OS X which will only install on specific hardware and only uses their own drivers (for the most part). Not sure why you're complaining. It's true that quite a bit of crashes (bsods) occur on windows due to crappy drivers. I don't see why Microsoft shouldn't regulate the quality of the drivers that are introduced into the operating system that they made. But whether their approval process is up to snuff is another question that should be considered. This isn't like open source drivers, where if a problem is found some kind soul will fix the problem within a week or so.

    7. Re:Can become outdated fast by griffjon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Windows Vista: stealing the pretty GUI crap from Gnome, KDE, and OSX, but leaving out useful shit like apt and yum

      --
      Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
  2. Good news for competition by JPMaximilian · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is good news for Linux and OS X. Installing Drivers is so 1998.

    --
    "I'll see you next time." - LeVar Burton
    1. Re:Good news for competition by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is good news for Linux and OS X. Installing Drivers is so 1998.

      Yes, because no one ever has trouble getting a wifi card to work under Linux. Or printer drivers working under OSX. In fact, surprising though it may be to you, getting drivers to work is often one of the biggest difficulties of installing Linux. And sure, OSX comes with drivers for all the Apple hardware, but if you have some weird piece of proprietary hardware, there is a good possibility you won't ever find a driver for it.

      As for Windows Vista, I hope it falls on it's face or at least loses 30% market share, leaving the rest for OSX, linux, openbsd, solaris, and a beautiful world of open standards and interoperability. Or at least giving people more freedom to leave windows if they need to.

      --
      Qxe4
    2. Re:Good news for competition by nmb3000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      However, the point is, many distros, such as Ubuntu, require 0 drivers to install (depending on your hardware).

      Do you have any idea how ironic this sentence is? OF COURSE it depends on your hardware! I bet you could find a hardware configuration that will work completely off Vista's native driver cache as well, especially if you're happy with vanilla video and sound support.

      On my desktop the only drivers I would have had to install were video drivers if I wanted 3d acceleration.

      Anymore 3D acceleration is pretty much a must-have. Especially with newfangled things like Aero and XGL becoming the norm. Even basic tasks like moving windows around perform much, much better with acceleration.

      (certainly it's more difficult than OS X)

      I bet if Microsoft made all their own hardware and then locked people into only using Vista on said hardware, it would be easy as pie to get Vista configured for the hardware. What an idea! Except, of course, that the whole idea behind the PC is open hardware standards, vendor competition, and consumer choice.

      Honestly, the way Windows (and Linux to a large extent, though it's vendor base is significantly smaller than Windows) manages to interoperate with hundreds of thousands of different vendor's drivers is pretty impressive. It's one thing to claim stability when 95% consumer configurations are identical to your test bench, it's another to have no idea what kind of cheap crazy crap consumers will install and still have comparable stability.

      --
      "What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
      /)
  3. Something's missing... by bubbl07 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any printer drivers. The rest of the stuff seems fairly straight-forward to get, but printer drivers I think have been the bane of everyone's upgrade experience since Windows 98 or earlier. Thank goodness for hplip. However, that won't help me much when I start getting friends and family asking me to upgrade their computers to Vista despite all my year-old warnings. That'll be my cue to sit back smugly and laugh at them.

    In any event, I'm sure there are many that will find this aggregation useful.

  4. challenging period by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    From the site: "This FREE page lists the latest Windows Vista drivers and provides direct links to the files for downloads. We're offering this as a free service to the community, to help you all get through this challenging period of Vista-transitioning."

    But all the links go to store.apple.com

    I don't get it.

  5. Never mind Vista Drivers by jaseparlo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've just spent two days trying to get XP working on a HP notebook that arrived here with Vista preinstalled. We can't and won't use Vista (no Novell support, and you wouldn't use an only-just-released OS in a corporate environment anyway), but the HP site doesn't offer any XP drivers for it's current models. Hunted around and managed to get drivers for most things, but the nvidia driver refuses to work...

    I understand that M$ has forced the Vista install on vendors, but I don't understand why they can't make the rollback to XP an option for those of us that want/need it.

    --
    All available data suggest that regardless of any of this, the sun will still come up tomorrow.
    1. Re:Never mind Vista Drivers by Osty · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hunted around and managed to get drivers for most things, but the nvidia driver refuses to work...

      Don't blame HP for that one. Blame nVidia's insistence that OEMs support mobile chipsets with their own "official" drivers (which the likes of HP/Compaq and Dell never keep up to date, of course). The thing is, mobile chipsets are generally no different from their desktop counterparts when it comes to drivers. For nVidia drivers, check out LaptopVideo2Go.com. For ATi, try DH Mod tool. In either case, the "problem" is that the inf for the drivers don't contain the right information to detect mobile chipsets, even though the drivers will work just fine on them. The "fix" is to hack the inf so that the installers will allow you to apply the drivers to your mobile card.

    2. Re:Never mind Vista Drivers by ettlz · · Score: 3, Informative

      In either case, the "problem" is that the inf for the drivers don't contain the right information to detect mobile chipsets, even though the drivers will work just fine on them. The "fix" is to hack the inf so that the installers will allow you to apply the drivers to your mobile card.

      That's right. Just to add a bit on: I get the latest nVidia drivers working on my notebook by unpacking both the recent executable and the one on the CD-ROM supplied with the notebook with 7-zip, copying the .inf file across, and then running the setup utility.

  6. Re:Vista Drivers Page Necessary? by statusbar · · Score: 3, Funny

    Soon, when Vista gets as many drivers as linux already has, perhaps Vista will be ready for the desktop!

    --jeffk++

    --
    ipv6 is my vpn
  7. Tip for Vista users by alienmole · · Score: 4, Funny

    You don't need this drivers page, all you need is to disable those pesky security dialogs and go surf the web for a while. Be sure to click "Yes" or "OK" on any messages that pop up. Pretty soon, everything you need to run Vista will be downloaded and installed on your machine automatically!

  8. Google Cache by Reo+Strong · · Score: 4, Informative
    http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:YltYVhNTm0gJ:w ww.radarsync.com/vista/+http://www.radarsync.com/v ista/&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&lr=lang_en&client=f irefox-a

    Google Cache: you know, since I can't see the page anymore, maybe some of you can't either.

    //no html skilz

    --
    "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -Anon.
  9. Manufacture specific by sieb · · Score: 3, Informative

    Be careful, alot of these are manufacture specific, example: the Atheros drivers. I've been hoping to find some Atheros drivers that work in Vista on the Macbook that include a newer version of their Client software (old versions have all options greyed out), but the drivers on this site are for either IBM or Fujitsu laptops. Also keep in mind that many companies, like Atheros, don't release their own drivers publicly and instead rely on the hardware manufacture to maintain them.

  10. Whoever is crazy enough to download drivers by slashdot.org · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Whoever is crazy enough to download drivers from places linked to by this site?

    I mean, all good intentions aside, but drivers are binary files, it's rediculous enough that most of them aren't digitally signed even when downloaded from the original manufacturer. But explain why exactly this site is sending us to "files.3dnews.ru" to download ATI drivers???

    Shit, I can't even come up with a hooker/unprotected sex analogy that's silly enough to describe this.

    In any case, if this is the way for Vista customers to get their new purchase to work, then yeah, glory days for Linux ahead...