The Case of the Crashed Phone Call

re: The Case of the Crashed Phone Call

nahiaali15 — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:04:29 GMT

nice look.

re: The Case of the Crashed Phone Call

Spirit of 76 — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:46:58 GMT

Having worked as a validation engineer for one of the largest hardware vendors, I can tell you the issue is with the respective OEM. As part of the offical QA and release process, we provided all of our major OEM copies of the beta and RC code for evaluation. In many instances, code was witheld from being designated 'GA' because of changes an OEM wanted.

To eliminate having to produce multiple versions of drivers, most vendors work from a single code set but have switches that tweak the install for one OEM's hardware or another. A good example is HP verse Dell.

As for what is available on the OEM website is dependant on a lot of factors, including the company's policy on postsale support. This, policy, in of itself, is the most likely reason why you will see some OEM's websites having more current drivers then others. Also, many companies support their business products in a totally different maner than their consumer products - so this is a differentiator as well.

Bottom line, is is always best to go to the hardware/software vendors support site for the most current. But as always, make sure that you have a good, current backup of your system before applying the update - just in case.

re: The Case of the Crashed Phone Call

Inigo Montoya — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:24:57 GMT

I don't think Aaron knows what "chagrin" means either. Perhaps he should try using a dictionary.

(You killed my language; prepare to die)

re: The Case of the Crashed Phone Call

JWN — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 02:06:20 GMT

"Hopefully, Dell will start leveraging Windows Update to provide its customers the latest drivers."

What is the point of this last sentence? The previous sentence stated that even Windows Update did not have the latest driver from Intel. What does it matter if Dell uses WU to deliver drivers, if the device manufacturer doesn't use WU themselves?

re: The Case of the Crashed Phone Call

Tom — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:02:11 GMT

My knowledge of drivers and their permissions is apparently out of date. I thought in NT 4, all drivers still ran in user-mode and only the video driver was moved to ring 0 to improve system performance.

Why is the Intel non-video driver able to bluescreen the system?

In fact, since it did something clearly illegal, the OS should theoretically be able to recognize that and kill+restart the driver for you automatically. Instead of a bluescreen you'd get a glitch in your call.

Microsoft may catch a lot of crap for code it didn't write, but that doesn't mean the crap is undeserved.

re: The Case of the Crashed Phone Call

Aaron — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:53:50 GMT

mrnathan,

That sentence makes perfect sense. He's annoyed that Dell didn't have the newest Intel drivers by a whole major revision.

Maybe he should have been relieved or happy he found a solution, but he was annoyed he found Dell was so far out of date.

re: The Case of the Crashed Phone Call

mrnathan — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 05:48:13 GMT

I don't think "chagrin" means what the article's author thinks it means.

re: The Case of the Crashed Phone Call

Mike Devonport — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:15:56 GMT

Just so happens my otherwise stable XP Dell X1 system (which hasn't BSOD for as long as I can remember) crashed last night using Skype in just the same way.

The only problems I've ever had with it have been tracked down to the wireless drivers in the past. Its a very good bet that is the cause and shall also be updating the drivers today.

Thanks, excellent article.

re: The Case of the Crashed Phone Call

Yuhong bao — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:01:48 GMT

" 300K of code and 74Mb+ of crap."

Not all of the rest is crap, though some of it may be crap

"now that all of my systems are 64-bit it's required."

Signing a driver so it will load on 64-bit Vista do not require WHQL certification.

re: The Case of the Crashed Phone Call

Nick Mullins — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:28:03 GMT

"In what world is a 75Mb wireless card driver acceptable? 300K of code and 74Mb+ of crap.

Thursday, January 08, 2009 6:04 PM by Dave Ashton "

AMEN to that!