Windows 7 drivers

Win7 Auto-detect Doesn’t Always Load the Right Drivers

In switching my test and production PCs over from Vista (or creating dual boot Vista/Win7 or XP-SP3/Win7 setups), I’ve observed that while Windows 7 does a very good job of identifying most hardware and then loading the proper driver, I’ve also recently observed that its accuracy is less than perfect. This can lead to interesting problems and apparent stability issues, so it’s a possible culprit worth pondering when otherwise rock-solid Win7 installations start showing signs of driver-related instability.

Case in point: My Dell All-in-One (AIO) 968 inkjet printer. As I documented in a ViztaView blog a little over a year ago, that OS also misidentified this printer as a Dell AIO 968 XPS printer. XPS is the Microsoft XML Paper specification created as a platform independent document exchange format, and essentially forces the printer driver to convert all other print input forms into XPS prior to allowing the printer to output any files deposited into the AIO 968’s print queue. As it turns out, Win7 also falls prey to the same misidentification, which produces a slew of “Print Filter Pipeline Host” errors when the whatever-format-to-XPS conversion runs into trouble (which it does all the time, if my experience with this particular device misidentification is any guide). Thus, if you look at this Reliability Monitor display for 10/23/2009, you’ll see 6 instances of the “Print Filter Pipeline Host” “stopped working” errors on that day, as I printed a bunch of stuff (coloring pages for my son, actually).

Look at all the print filter pipeline errors!

When Dell released a new Windows 7 driver for this printer on October 5, I happily installed it and kept my nose to the grindstone without really checking my work. Had I done so, I would have noticed that the device had been incorrectly identified as a “Dell 968 AIO XPS Printer” rather than a “Dell 968 AIO Printer.” Because the former always invokes XPS conversion as part of the print process, and that process throws lots of errors — particularly when printing Web pages — I suddenly found myself back in the swamp with those “Print Filter Pipeline Host” errors once again.

It wasn’t until I went into Devices and Printers, right-clicked the Dell 968 entry and forced it to be identified as the right printer that I got things working. Simply uninstalling the driver and letting Win7 re-detect the hardware did no good whatsoever, because the OS misidentified this device as a “Dell 968 AIO XPS Printer” all over again, instead of the plain-vanilla version of the device. A quick manual override fixed this, and now things are working fine. (Hint: click the Set as default pop-up menu entry, and both printers will appear, so you can select which one to set as the default. That does the trick!)

All I need to do in future is to remember to make this manual change, if I ever need to re-detect that hardware in Windows 7 again. Just another little Windows eccentricity to add to my list of things to keep track of!

Windows 7 Comes Off Pretty Darn Well

Now that I’ve gotten Windows 7 (the latest beta build: 7057) up and running on a couple of computers, I understand most of the recent hoopla it’s garnered a whole lot better. It is indeed quick and easy to install: under half an hour in all cases, working from an ISO download I burned to DVD after downloading it from MSDN. Windows 7 does consume fewer resources and run faster than Vista, just like other recent reports indicate. Also, it does a decent to stellar job of recognizing hardware and getting itself installed with a minimum of user input and activity involved. I selected a language, confirmed my time zone and locale, provided a key, and indicated I was using a home network. That was the entire extent of my interaction with the PCs upon which I installed this software (one notebook, one desktop, just to get the full flavor of Win7 in my test environment).

I also now understand that Windows 7 is a whole lot more like Vista than it is unlike Vista, though it does look completely different, and organize the desktop as well as access to programs, services, and so forth a bit differently. It worked perfectly with all the software I threw at it with only two exceptions: it wouldn’t run PerfectDisk 10 for defrag (analyzing a drive produced the generic catchall “Error 0″ notification) nor would it run Unknown Devices 1.2 (when run on Vista, this program reports “I don’t know what OS this is exactly, so I guessed where the PnP info is, and I’m right!” I’m guessing this means PnP data has moved in Windows 7 or it probably would have worked, too. That said, HunterSoft/Zhanguo.com’s Unknown Device Identifier worked fine on Windows 7).

Unlike Ed Bott’s recent report on installing and living with Build 7057, Windows 7 didn’t recognize all the devices on my HP HDX18-1001xx, as it did on his Dell XPS 420. It only missed on 7 items though, including two Intel ICH9 chipset elements (Thermal Subsystem 2932 and SMBus Controller 2930), the notebook’s built-in HP Webcam and Validity Fingerprint scanner, the ENE CIR Receiver (for IR remote control support), the ATSC/Analog TV tuner card, and the JMicron memory card reader (MS, SD, SD/MMC, xD). A quick trip to the HP Customer Care Web pages for my notebook made downloading the necessary 32-bit Vista drivers a snap. All installed without a hitch. I was even able to use my old tried and trusted DriverAgent tool to check and confirm driver status, as shown here:

DriverAgent Works Nicely with Windows 7

Most impressively, the wireless networking and Bluetooth elements on the system worked flawlessly as soon as the system booted “for real” after the install completed. This is the first time in my experience that wireless connections have worked as quickly and painlessly with Windows as they did here, Vista and XP included.

All this experience and my (mostly successful) navigation of the Windows 7 UI confirms my belief that Windows 7 is incredibly Vista-like. This definitely explains why MS is touting Vista as the right point of departure for getting to know Windows 7, because these two OSes are more alike than they are different. It’s also made working with and getting to know Windows 7 a whole lot easier and faster than I expected it to be.

My next project is to install Windows 7 on an Asus Eee PC 1000HE, but I’m waiting on a USB enclosure for a DVD drive to arrive by mailorder before I can get started on that project–which I’ll be documenting extensively in an article for InformIT.com. Stay tuned here for the high points, and for more information about my Win 7 adventures. So far, so good, however.