Someone Is Lying!

After changing hard drives, and burning the DVD of Windows 7 Beta 1, I set about the task of putting it on the machine I had spoken about in the last installment.

First the good news.

Microsoft has prettied up the installer. It genuinely impressed me (and my loyal readers know that doesn’t happen with Microsoft very often) For the most part, the install went well, however, the system came up on the 3rd reboot with no sound. I would have expected something that is so feature complete to either say it was downloading the drivers for the sound device, or ask if it should look, without my intervention. Nope, this one has not progressed that far as yet.

I downloaded the drivers, after searching the ATi site, and also grabbed the video drivers and Southbridge driver. The audio driver installed without incident, but did not automatically pop up a volume icon in the tray – I don’t like that. I had to go troubleshoot this and after forcing the icon into the tray, and changing the audio from digital (where there was no connection) to analog (where a set of Harmon-Kardon satellites with a subwoofer was, I was finally ok.

I then installed the Southbridge driver, without incident. Next came the Northbridge driver and other stuff (several things according to ATi, not specifically itemized) which unbeknownst to me, held the rest of the video driver files. Well, the install would hang at (subjectively, by the accompanying graph) 66%, and sit there, with the processor icon showing 100% usage. Joy!

After stopping the madness, and trying again, the same exact results were achieved. So, at the behest of my son, because I was tired, and getting very mad, I went to my friend Google, and put in ‘ATi x64 Windows 7 drivers’. All of a sudden, I was on the ATi discussion forums, and literally boatloads of people are having the same problem. It doesn’t seem to matter whether these people have the beta version I have, or the one before it, or built in graphics, or a Radeon 4870X2, or the 8-11 drivers, or the latest 8-12 drivers – all of them cause the machine to stall at this same subjective point!

Thanks a lot Microsoft, for saying that Windows 7 uses the EXACT SAME driver model, so any Vista driver will work fine on Windows 7.

Thanks a lot ATi, for putting out yet another set of crappy, unfinished, buggy, and bothersome drivers! You mothers have not learned a darn thing since the Mach 8 chips.

Never time to do it right, but always time to do it again (and still not get it right!)

So, what have we learned. We have learned that either Microsoft is lying about the Vista drivers working for 7, or ATi can’t write a driver for either Vista or 7 to save them from damnation. Which is it? As of now, I don’t know because I am too tired to apply further logic to the situation.

We have also learned that the network setup wizard works fine, but nowhere (that I can see right now) is the name of the home network given. Yes I have connection to the other 3 machines running at this time of night, but I’d be hard pressed to tell anyone what the name of the network is (this might be a Vista thing, I don’t remember – it’s been a long while since I’ve worked on a Vista machine in a home network. If anyone wants to point this out, go ahead, but be nice, remember I am very tired, and have been up close to 24 hours, with no Jolt or other source of major caffeine!)

We have also learned, that, as it is installed, the same graphical garbage that Vista installs, is there by default in 7.

We have also learned that the menu system in Windows 7 truly sucks as delivered, and I will have to take care of this after some rest.

This stalls everything right now, no DirectX stuff, including ANY of the screensavers that come with this, and so the only thing that can be done is blank the screen. So no Aero comparison with Vista, no game play, and lots of frustration over no working drivers for video (the Microsoft drivers are very bare, provide no acceleration whatsoever, and don’t allow the capabilities of the hardware to be used in the slightest).

On the other hand, there were no fits and starts with the setup, but I do think it should have asked more questions before setting up, instead of assuming so much – I am sure this is a decision that Microsoft made to allow a bonehead user to at least have a working machine, but there should be an advanced install mode.

Some good, but most (subjectively) bad, as ATi will not be fixing the drivers on a Sunday, nor will Microsoft update anything over the weekend.

(if anyone has similar results with an nVidia installation, I’d like to hear about it, but I imagine that there won’t be any, as nVidia has always been smooth as silk for me.) Come to think of it, that nVidia card mentioned will probably find a place into the machine tomorrow! (oops, later today)

So, thanks Microsoft, for allowing a preview of the next OS, although I’m not sure this is going to make me feel warm and fuzzy – there are way too many things I don’t like, and though I might be able to tweak them into shape – should I have to? This is supposed to be a step forward.

Far from done, I’ll be continuing after a rest. I’m tenacious, and I know that I’ll have to know this stuff to do my job. (‘cause you know how some people will buy anything new!)

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I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There’s a knob called ‘brightness’, but it doesn’t work.Gallagher