vista and hardware drivers?

turtle3 · 17 Mar 2006 at 13:38

Just thinking ahead here, will vist require different hardware drivers like xp64. I tried xp64 for all of one day and it was a complete headache regarding drivers. I couldnt even connect to the internet as Netgear have not even realeased drivers to support 64bit computing. I dont really fancy buying a whole wireless network set up just to run vista??

lordedmond · 17 Mar 2006 at 13:42

turtle3 said:
Just thinking ahead here, will vist require different hardware drivers like xp64. I tried xp64 for all of one day and it was a complete headache regarding drivers. I couldnt even connect to the internet as Netgear have not even realeased drivers to support 64bit computing. I dont really fancy buying a whole wireless network set up just to run vista??

we all will have to wait and see as MS have altered the way the drivers are written

Dru · 17 Mar 2006 at 13:58

Unless things change it will require drivers made specifically for it as far as I know.. When I was running the beta I needed special drivers from ati and creative that had vista support.

It's not all bad though as the built in driver support in vista will probably be improved and it already picks up a lot of general hardware (wireless cards, motherboard audio/networking) and that sort of thing.

turtle3 · 17 Mar 2006 at 14:50

So do you think we will have to renew all our wireless hardware or will there be another way of running hardware that needs 32bit drivers, like I said Netgear wireless routers dont support 64bit and have no intention of doing so if what i read is true. just think if you had to renew all hardware, printer scanner soundcards, networking gear etc :eek:

Dru · 17 Mar 2006 at 16:00

I think the reason that 64-bit driver support for wireless cards and other hardware is lacking so much is because a lot of companies didn't really take the lauch of windows x64 seriously. Vista is a major release and as such I would expect companies to invest more time in getting their products to be compatible with the new OS.

Caged · 17 Mar 2006 at 16:19

You know routers don't need drivers don't you?

turtle3 · 17 Mar 2006 at 17:57

Oh well you know what I meant, stop being so pedantic

,lol....Thanks for replies but I still didnt really get an answer though,,, will I have to buy a new wireless set up??? :confused:

Dru · 17 Mar 2006 at 18:17

No one can answer that until vista is released and we see what companies update their drivers and what hardware vista will support out of the box.

NathanE · 17 Mar 2006 at 20:38

When Windows 2000 was released all the hardware vendors were using the same line "Sorry we don't have drivers for that because it is a high-end workstation OS that's not for consumers or multimedia hardware." How wrong were they?

And how quickly did they change their tune?

You guys can expect Vista driver support to really heat up around July-August. Of course it won't be perfect on launch date but it'll be steadily improving.