Why is Windows so bad at drivers?

I try to not be overly critical but why is Microsoft so bad at handling drivers? I think it would be in the interest of Microsoft that tthe Windows ISO at lest should be able to install windows on the computer so the user is hooked. They wouldn’t have to make the drivers themselves, just make sure they were on the installation iso.

select-driver-to-be-installed

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All hail Katie! In this case it was the Intel USB 3.0 drivers that was needed.

While yelling at Microsoft I might’ve figured out why. If something is really really stupid it might be intentionally. In the case of the drivers I’m pretty sure it’s a legal reasons. If you loose something important while using a driver that Microsoft hasn’t distributed they can deny and legal responsibility. That’s pretty much the only reason I can think of why a Windows 7 sp1 iso don’t come with the Intel usb 3.0 extensible host controller driver.

Other drivers that might be missing as late as of Windows 11 are Intel rapid storage technology driver and AMD raid driver.

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In my case I had to grab USB drivers for different motherboard entirely, as understandably mine didn’t have any for such old OS. I also needed networking ones as well :wink:

Windows user base and all the devices made for it with crappy drivers made in china. I do get its had to let everything work on windows with dodgy drives so users buyin crap does somewhat work.

Buying only validated devices. Would be MS raping all the devices ever built.

Toshiba pretends like they never even made this laptop :stuck_out_tongue:

Now it was a Toshiba laptop and the Windows 7 sp1 iso. Intel usb 3.0 extensible host controller driver was missing. Last week it was a HP Pavilion 15 and the Windows 11 iso. Don’t think neither of those are crappy nor made in China.

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Maybe could’ve been solved if the USB controller was set-up on USB 3.0 + 2.0 support, or 2.0 only for the installation

True but when the new model comes out in a year the driver support drops dead on the old one.

We lucky phones give us long time support of like 3 years… Phones can last as devices 10 years… more with replacable batteries.

Its all about moving on and buy the next new thing now not good drivers.

Thus windows supports devices long dead untill broken by forced upgrades.

I’m not so sure about that. For one, USB2.0 support could’ve been enabled at the BIOS/UEFI if it was supported.

For Windows 11, there’s this trend of laptops configuring RAID mode on their SATA controllers.

I’m wondering if the copyright nature of the drivers may have an impact on how Windows supplies the drivers. Why doesn’t Windows include the RST drivers out of the box?

I’m pretty sure there are other Intel drivers included, but someone with a longer attention span than I have to look at that :stuck_out_tongue: If it’s a copyright thing it’s weird because the drivers can be shipped on the OEM installation disks.

I was thinking along the lines of how long it takes for copyrighted code outside of Microsoft to be allowed into the installer…

That is singlar focas on intel drivers in a world of devices with drivers that still crash with intel ones for hacking or worse

I can understand if they don’t include the drivers for niche device with buggy drivers that only exists in Chinese. I can not understand when they don’t include the drivers from one of the largest tech companies in the world for a basic function that is needed for the installation.

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Isn’t that what OEM installations are for? Almost all computers come with Windows preinstalled by the manufacturer, which will necessarily be done using an image containing at least the bare necessary drivers. Furthermore, at least the big vendors offer the respective ISOs to reinstall Windows for download.

Of course, I think you should rather install a free OS where possible but I will not further belabour that point here.

Yes, but I see no point in intentionally making it harder to install with the official iso. And what really annoys me is that the reason clearly isn’t technical.

I mean, it must be a whole different can of worms when drivers are copyrighted and not open source - not that I agree with it, these should be moot points for windows, but I can see how that may be a problem

someone remind me, what is the market cap of Microsoft?? A multi billion dollar company cant find it in the budget to just write their own basic versions of required drivers necessary to install the OS on certain basic devices? Yea that sounds about right. Joke company, joke OS. Meanwhile I spin up a copy of Ubuntu LTS and the same exact hardware “just works” out of the box. lmao

Well they gave up on internet explorer and hit up chrome… How long till windows kernel is linux ?

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Am I missing something? Doesn’t the installation media build number predate Intel’s implementation of USB 3.0?
Can’t have driver support baked-in for hardware that doesn’t even exist yet.

I don’t think it was until Windows build 7776 that bugged xHCI drivers were included in the installation media, I’m not even sure when they were fixed but I think it was milestone 3 of that series.

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The usb 3.0 drivers on Windows 7 was just one of the examples I gave. Also, if millions of Windows users can make their own installation iso with drivers included Microsoft can release a drivers only update.

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I guess the issue here, collecting everything that has been said - and do correct me if I’m wrong - is that Windows 7 (Oct 2009) did not have the USB3.0 (specs on Nov 2008) drivers because of their release date and slow adoption from hardware manufacturers at the time.

To flip the question, did Ubuntu, Debian or other distro around that time of release had built in support for USB 3.0?

Mind you that you can switch the controller support mode in the BIOS to 2.0, and things will work until you can load the 3.0 drivers. But I think no one will read this last bit.

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