7 ms·

Windows 10 is getting an easier way to update and install drivers

45 points by GordonS 7y ago

GordonS 7y ago
Windows 7 does this for some drivers, but it only seems to be for a limited list (e.g. selected Intel NICs), and the drivers are woefully outdated. I guess this might be "enough" for people buying some of the most popular PCs (e.g. Dell), but it's certainly not going to be for everyone.
- deith 7y ago
  Every part of my computer, which I built myself, gets its drivers from Windows Update. Drivers have been pushed from Windows Update since... forever? Granted, I always install a more recent version myself.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - GordonS 7y ago
    Huh, I've used Windows 10 for years now, and didn't realise it still had this feature - I don't recall ever seeing any "optional updates"? But then, for most things I always install recent'ish drivers from the manufacturer myself, which I guess would disable this feature for at least those things.
    - deith 7y ago
      Only that they are not optional, they force you to install those drivers (unless you're installed your own before). But they do indeed show up on Windows Update. https://filestore.community.support.microsoft.com/api/images/2f0c0423-8e09-4b73-bc97-c4d0359f2538 https://filestore.community.support.microsoft.com/api/images...
      - Lammy 7y ago
        They are optional. The option is just not visible in that UI. If you have Windows 10 Pro or higher, open the Group Policy Management snap-in, navigate to "Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update", edit "Do not include drivers with Windows Update" and set it to 'Enabled'. If you have Windows 10 Home you can get the same effect by manually creating the registry key the Policy controls. Go to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate", create a new DWORD 'ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate', and set it to '1'.
  - StillBored 7y ago
    Yah, I don't understand why MS doesn't just make sure more of the drivers are in windows update or updated on a more regular basis as part of the driver signing program.
gruez 7y ago
>Windows Update’s Optional Updates section will let you see all optional updates including drivers and monthly non-security updates in one place. If I remember correctly, all the way up to windows 8.1, you could choose which updates to install. It was only with windows 10 that they removed the ability to select updates. It's ironic how they're touting this as a new feature, when really it's fixing a regression.
- Railsify 7y ago
  And you will still have to reboot.
  - mcny 7y ago
    I don’t mind updates. I do mind the unprompted reboots (on unmanaged machines). My understanding is we can’t fix this issue of requiring reboot to update without losing a lot of backward compatibility. However, disabling unprompted reboots on unmanaged devices (not managed by an corporation/organization) should be easy.
    - Railsify 7y ago
      It's not a problem unless you are updating the kernel but if you run your services using clusters then rolling reboots to update the kernel can be managed with no downtime.
- zerkten 7y ago
  Choice is a problem with updates, but they probably went too far. When a choice is possible then people will skip updates which endangers the whole ecosystem. The prevalence of Windows means that they can't let individuals make too many choices because bad outcomes reflect on Microsoft and not those users or admins who contributed to the problem. There is pressure from governments and companies for protection from infrastructure threats which drives some of this thinking. This is not limited to Microsoft, even Firefox introduced updater changes which limits how users can opt-out of automatic updates. There was likely an assumption that restart-less upgrades would become a reality more quickly than they have, so the responsible teams went with a simplified update mechanism to protect the ecosystem. That backfired in a range of other ways, but at least the ecosystem is relatively safe.
thibran 7y ago
It's the year 2019. We communicate with the speed of light across the ocean and manipulate DNA, but installing drivers is still not a solved problem on Windows... ... and a modern display server is still not used by default on Linux.
- JohnTHaller 7y ago
  To be fair, one less desire-able 'solution' to drivers issues would be to not allow the hardware to work at all. MacOS users don't have access to Nvidia graphics cards, for example. I'll take Windows' driver work over that any day.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    MacOS includes drivers for (most) 700-series graphics cards. It's just, Apple hasn't shipped Macs with nVidia cards since 2013ish, so they don't ship Mac OS with drivers for cards they never used, either. nVidia used to ship third party Mac drivers for their newer cards, but they decided to stop maintaining them a couple years ago, possibly because Apple said they wouldn't sign them them†, depending on how you interpret vague PR statements. Still, the third party drivers work on slightly older OS's—I'm currently typing this from a macOS High Sierra machine that has a GTX 1080 Ti. † I want to note that driver signing isn't some draconian Apple thing, 64 bit versions of Windows also require signatures. You can install unsigned drivers on macOS by partially disabling SIP, but presumably nVidia didn't want to ship drivers that would require that.
    - gdxhyrd 7y ago
      Even for supported cards, Apple's drivers are broken. OpenGL support is a decade old and deprecated. No Vulkan support whatsoever. No Direct3D either. No CUDA even if you own an NVIDIA card. The only thing that works is Metal, on purpose.
    - maximilianburke 7y ago
      It’s not the driver signing that’s the problem. It’s that Apple is a gatekeeper for driver signatures and won’t release drivers unless it suits them. I know the GTX 1080 works on High Sierra, but that OS is at (or near) the end of its supported life. Microsoft manages the driver signing process but doesn’t play these games. If nVidia wants to write and maintain drivers for macOS, why get in their way?
johnjeffers 7y ago
“...getting _an_ easier way...” Come on, people. This is very basic grammar.
- tpmx 7y ago
  This is a third-party site.
  - ecommerceguy 7y ago
    If i said Grammar Nazi, instead of National Socialist, I would not have been flagged. Seriously HN get a grip. Nazis were/are Socialists. Fact. Also after 4 hours the post title is still incorrect. Does anyone want to dispute the proper English?
    - dang 7y ago
      Please don't take HN threads on tedious off topic tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - ecommerceguy 7y ago
        I'll take this as a tacit admit of partisanship on the mods part. Was I incorrect? Does title correction not happen frequently without flagging? Answer honestly and don't cower behind a digital wall.
        dang 7y ago
        Happy to answer, but I don't understand the question. Partisanship for whom? Sure, we correct titles all the time. I just didn't see that one earlier.
RandomInteger4 7y ago
I built a new computer and for the first time in over a decade I wanted to try Windows, but apparently I was missing drivers for something. It never told me what I needed drivers for, and even with all the drivers for all the parts I could find on a separate USB drive, it couldn't find the drivers that I supposedly needed, so I gave up and chose to install Ubuntu instead. Ubuntu apparently knew all the drivers I needed, fetched them from beyond the great ether, and all was in harmony. Why is this so easy for Canonical, but not Microsoft?
tpmx 7y ago
I have been using Windows 10 (and its ancestors) on a kick-ass desktop PC for the past decade or so. It's been a shit-show. I've probably spent about 2 full days totally out of action, during this period, if I'm only counting downtime caused by MSFT idiocy.
- partiallypro 7y ago
  Are you a time traveler? Because it only came out 4.5 years ago...
  - tpmx 7y ago
    No, I'm not. The current product name is Windows 10. When I bought the retail DVD + license key package sometime back in 2008 or so the product was called Windows 7. I could take a photo of the retail package if you really want. Please chill. Edit: I should just stop commenting on threads involving Microsoft/Windows, I guess. Any criticism to the product or the company in these these kinds of threads are not treated lighly.
    - judge2020 7y ago
      > I have been using Windows 10 on a kick-ass desktop PC for the past decade or so This very much sounds like you mean you've used Windows 10, the current non-7, non-8, non-8.1 software for a decade.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - snvzz 7y ago
        For most, win7 turned into 10 via free upgrade.
      - slenk 7y ago
        So did he add the "and its ancestors" part after you commented? edit: CApitalization
Quiark 7y ago
i love how all the way to Windows 7 (not tested any newer) it still has the same GUI for driver installation as Windows 3.1
Havoc 7y ago
If this gets rid of NVIDIAs god forsaken driver update BS then I’ll be delighted. (Requires logging in with a password/profile it doesn’t remember between updates and disabling pi hole for some stupid reason)
- knolan 7y ago
  Isn’t this part of the (awful) GeForce experience app? You can still just download drivers directly from the Nvidia webpage without logging in.
  - tony 7y ago
    Yes, plain drivers are available: http://www.geforce.com/drivers http://www.geforce.com/drivers That said, Windows 10 driver handling already handles the basic drivers out of the box (at least for me) Generally though, these manufacturers have their own driver / bios update software that 1.) creates additional background / tray apps 2.) autostarts 3.) offers implicitly to download extra "helpful", "optional" software Examples of software where all three happens: Fujitsu ScanSnap, Gigabyte Aorus Motherboard, Lenovo Advantage So now there's a passive, consistent performance loss on the system, a tray icon hogging up space, "helpful" notifications, and unsolicited popups not offering driver updates, but to download additional software (box is already checked) One nice thing about Linux/BSD desktops is even when Nvidia did proprietary stuff, the most you'd see back in the day is an Nvidia logo when starting X (editing xorg.conf could disable it)
    - vbezhenar 7y ago
      I bought Lenovo laptop few days ago and installed fresh Windows. Then I enabled WiFi and left it for a hour. It installed ALL drivers including Nvidia drivers and Nvidia control panel. I checked driver versions with Lenovo support page and every driver was fresh. Windows did awesome work with automatically installing drivers. Nvidia driver was not fresh, I think it was from July, 22, 2019, but I don't think that it's that old anyway. So for ordinary users Windows does very good job at installing drivers and I would recommend against doing anything by hand, unless absolutely necessary.
tinus_hn 7y ago
Now if only they’d vet the drivers in Windows Update and block these enormous bloatware turds that have become fashionable.
ecommerceguy 7y ago
an easier* - grammar national socialist here.
jokoon 7y ago
I have a non-computer-savvy friend who regularly has to reinstall nvidia graphic drivers because windows 10 update REGULARLY overwrites them with drivers that CRASHES blizzard games (world of warcraft, overwatch). Has to be done every 4 days or something like that. It's really weird to not know who is at fault here, if it's nvidia, microsoft or blizzard. There are no good way (other than disabling updates) to prevent windows update from overwriting drivers. I wish microsoft would do something about this. Can't even remember if I submitted some feedback. Not to mention this computer is crazy slow since the upgrade from win8 to win10. I know the usual "get a SSD", but that computer was NOT THAT SLOW before the upgrade. Anyway this computer is a all-in-one, which has weird hardware. But still, it's a i7, with 6GB of ram. It's hard to believe it takes so long to open the start menu or just a folder. Oh yeah, other thing: another friend bought an used laptop which had some insider preview enabled. 3 weeks ago her microphone just stopped working. Apparently you cannot remove an insider win10 build WITHOUT REINSTALLING. I was not able to fix it. I'm not even a maintenance guy.
- derefr 7y ago
  > Apparently you cannot remove an insider win10 build WITHOUT REINSTALLING. Well, yeah. If a beta takes a wrong direction in the design of a new on-disk data structure, do you really expect them to write a reverse-migration that turns it back into the old format? That's a lot of work for a tiny point-release on branch of development they're not even sure they're going to make public. No commercial OS supports this.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    They could've warned instead of defaulting to failure. I wish they'd ease up with signing core system files with short-lived certs either; I once had to reinstall my PC after not booting into Windows for ~3 months - when I tried to start Windows after that break, I discovered some core DLLs had expired certificates, preventing the system from booting.
- pvg 7y ago
  Apparently you cannot remove an insider win10 build WITHOUT REINSTALLING. You can go to the previous install you had quite painlessly. It's in 'recovery options'. You don't need to set a restore point, it just works.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

45 points by GordonS 7y ago

Windows 7 does this for some drivers, but it only seems to be for a limited list (e.g. selected Intel NICs), and the drivers are woefully outdated. I guess this might be "enough" for people buying some of the most popular PCs (e.g. Dell), but it's certainly not going to be for everyone.

deith 7y ago
Every part of my computer, which I built myself, gets its drivers from Windows Update. Drivers have been pushed from Windows Update since... forever? Granted, I always install a more recent version myself.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- GordonS 7y ago
  Huh, I've used Windows 10 for years now, and didn't realise it still had this feature - I don't recall ever seeing any "optional updates"? But then, for most things I always install recent'ish drivers from the manufacturer myself, which I guess would disable this feature for at least those things.
  - deith 7y ago
    Only that they are not optional, they force you to install those drivers (unless you're installed your own before). But they do indeed show up on Windows Update. https://filestore.community.support.microsoft.com/api/images/2f0c0423-8e09-4b73-bc97-c4d0359f2538 https://filestore.community.support.microsoft.com/api/images...
    - Lammy 7y ago
      They are optional. The option is just not visible in that UI. If you have Windows 10 Pro or higher, open the Group Policy Management snap-in, navigate to "Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update", edit "Do not include drivers with Windows Update" and set it to 'Enabled'. If you have Windows 10 Home you can get the same effect by manually creating the registry key the Policy controls. Go to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate", create a new DWORD 'ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate', and set it to '1'.
- StillBored 7y ago
  Yah, I don't understand why MS doesn't just make sure more of the drivers are in windows update or updated on a more regular basis as part of the driver signing program.

gruez 7y ago

>Windows Update’s Optional Updates section will let you see all optional updates including drivers and monthly non-security updates in one place. If I remember correctly, all the way up to windows 8.1, you could choose which updates to install. It was only with windows 10 that they removed the ability to select updates. It's ironic how they're touting this as a new feature, when really it's fixing a regression.

Railsify 7y ago
And you will still have to reboot.
- mcny 7y ago
  I don’t mind updates. I do mind the unprompted reboots (on unmanaged machines). My understanding is we can’t fix this issue of requiring reboot to update without losing a lot of backward compatibility. However, disabling unprompted reboots on unmanaged devices (not managed by an corporation/organization) should be easy.
  - Railsify 7y ago
    It's not a problem unless you are updating the kernel but if you run your services using clusters then rolling reboots to update the kernel can be managed with no downtime.
zerkten 7y ago
Choice is a problem with updates, but they probably went too far. When a choice is possible then people will skip updates which endangers the whole ecosystem. The prevalence of Windows means that they can't let individuals make too many choices because bad outcomes reflect on Microsoft and not those users or admins who contributed to the problem. There is pressure from governments and companies for protection from infrastructure threats which drives some of this thinking. This is not limited to Microsoft, even Firefox introduced updater changes which limits how users can opt-out of automatic updates. There was likely an assumption that restart-less upgrades would become a reality more quickly than they have, so the responsible teams went with a simplified update mechanism to protect the ecosystem. That backfired in a range of other ways, but at least the ecosystem is relatively safe.

thibran 7y ago

It's the year 2019. We communicate with the speed of light across the ocean and manipulate DNA, but installing drivers is still not a solved problem on Windows... ... and a modern display server is still not used by default on Linux.

JohnTHaller 7y ago
To be fair, one less desire-able 'solution' to drivers issues would be to not allow the hardware to work at all. MacOS users don't have access to Nvidia graphics cards, for example. I'll take Windows' driver work over that any day.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  MacOS includes drivers for (most) 700-series graphics cards. It's just, Apple hasn't shipped Macs with nVidia cards since 2013ish, so they don't ship Mac OS with drivers for cards they never used, either. nVidia used to ship third party Mac drivers for their newer cards, but they decided to stop maintaining them a couple years ago, possibly because Apple said they wouldn't sign them them†, depending on how you interpret vague PR statements. Still, the third party drivers work on slightly older OS's—I'm currently typing this from a macOS High Sierra machine that has a GTX 1080 Ti. † I want to note that driver signing isn't some draconian Apple thing, 64 bit versions of Windows also require signatures. You can install unsigned drivers on macOS by partially disabling SIP, but presumably nVidia didn't want to ship drivers that would require that.
  - gdxhyrd 7y ago
    Even for supported cards, Apple's drivers are broken. OpenGL support is a decade old and deprecated. No Vulkan support whatsoever. No Direct3D either. No CUDA even if you own an NVIDIA card. The only thing that works is Metal, on purpose.
  - maximilianburke 7y ago
    It’s not the driver signing that’s the problem. It’s that Apple is a gatekeeper for driver signatures and won’t release drivers unless it suits them. I know the GTX 1080 works on High Sierra, but that OS is at (or near) the end of its supported life. Microsoft manages the driver signing process but doesn’t play these games. If nVidia wants to write and maintain drivers for macOS, why get in their way?

johnjeffers 7y ago

“...getting _an_ easier way...” Come on, people. This is very basic grammar.

tpmx 7y ago
This is a third-party site.
- ecommerceguy 7y ago
  If i said Grammar Nazi, instead of National Socialist, I would not have been flagged. Seriously HN get a grip. Nazis were/are Socialists. Fact. Also after 4 hours the post title is still incorrect. Does anyone want to dispute the proper English?
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't take HN threads on tedious off topic tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - ecommerceguy 7y ago
      I'll take this as a tacit admit of partisanship on the mods part. Was I incorrect? Does title correction not happen frequently without flagging? Answer honestly and don't cower behind a digital wall.
      - dang 7y ago
        Happy to answer, but I don't understand the question. Partisanship for whom? Sure, we correct titles all the time. I just didn't see that one earlier.

RandomInteger4 7y ago

I built a new computer and for the first time in over a decade I wanted to try Windows, but apparently I was missing drivers for something. It never told me what I needed drivers for, and even with all the drivers for all the parts I could find on a separate USB drive, it couldn't find the drivers that I supposedly needed, so I gave up and chose to install Ubuntu instead. Ubuntu apparently knew all the drivers I needed, fetched them from beyond the great ether, and all was in harmony. Why is this so easy for Canonical, but not Microsoft?

tpmx 7y ago

I have been using Windows 10 (and its ancestors) on a kick-ass desktop PC for the past decade or so. It's been a shit-show. I've probably spent about 2 full days totally out of action, during this period, if I'm only counting downtime caused by MSFT idiocy.

partiallypro 7y ago
Are you a time traveler? Because it only came out 4.5 years ago...
- tpmx 7y ago
  No, I'm not. The current product name is Windows 10. When I bought the retail DVD + license key package sometime back in 2008 or so the product was called Windows 7. I could take a photo of the retail package if you really want. Please chill. Edit: I should just stop commenting on threads involving Microsoft/Windows, I guess. Any criticism to the product or the company in these these kinds of threads are not treated lighly.
  - judge2020 7y ago
    > I have been using Windows 10 on a kick-ass desktop PC for the past decade or so This very much sounds like you mean you've used Windows 10, the current non-7, non-8, non-8.1 software for a decade.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - snvzz 7y ago
      For most, win7 turned into 10 via free upgrade.
    - slenk 7y ago
      So did he add the "and its ancestors" part after you commented? edit: CApitalization

Quiark 7y ago

i love how all the way to Windows 7 (not tested any newer) it still has the same GUI for driver installation as Windows 3.1

Havoc 7y ago

If this gets rid of NVIDIAs god forsaken driver update BS then I’ll be delighted. (Requires logging in with a password/profile it doesn’t remember between updates and disabling pi hole for some stupid reason)

knolan 7y ago
Isn’t this part of the (awful) GeForce experience app? You can still just download drivers directly from the Nvidia webpage without logging in.
- tony 7y ago
  Yes, plain drivers are available: http://www.geforce.com/drivers http://www.geforce.com/drivers That said, Windows 10 driver handling already handles the basic drivers out of the box (at least for me) Generally though, these manufacturers have their own driver / bios update software that 1.) creates additional background / tray apps 2.) autostarts 3.) offers implicitly to download extra "helpful", "optional" software Examples of software where all three happens: Fujitsu ScanSnap, Gigabyte Aorus Motherboard, Lenovo Advantage So now there's a passive, consistent performance loss on the system, a tray icon hogging up space, "helpful" notifications, and unsolicited popups not offering driver updates, but to download additional software (box is already checked) One nice thing about Linux/BSD desktops is even when Nvidia did proprietary stuff, the most you'd see back in the day is an Nvidia logo when starting X (editing xorg.conf could disable it)
  - vbezhenar 7y ago
    I bought Lenovo laptop few days ago and installed fresh Windows. Then I enabled WiFi and left it for a hour. It installed ALL drivers including Nvidia drivers and Nvidia control panel. I checked driver versions with Lenovo support page and every driver was fresh. Windows did awesome work with automatically installing drivers. Nvidia driver was not fresh, I think it was from July, 22, 2019, but I don't think that it's that old anyway. So for ordinary users Windows does very good job at installing drivers and I would recommend against doing anything by hand, unless absolutely necessary.

tinus_hn 7y ago

Now if only they’d vet the drivers in Windows Update and block these enormous bloatware turds that have become fashionable.

ecommerceguy 7y ago

an easier* - grammar national socialist here.

jokoon 7y ago

I have a non-computer-savvy friend who regularly has to reinstall nvidia graphic drivers because windows 10 update REGULARLY overwrites them with drivers that CRASHES blizzard games (world of warcraft, overwatch). Has to be done every 4 days or something like that. It's really weird to not know who is at fault here, if it's nvidia, microsoft or blizzard. There are no good way (other than disabling updates) to prevent windows update from overwriting drivers. I wish microsoft would do something about this. Can't even remember if I submitted some feedback. Not to mention this computer is crazy slow since the upgrade from win8 to win10. I know the usual "get a SSD", but that computer was NOT THAT SLOW before the upgrade. Anyway this computer is a all-in-one, which has weird hardware. But still, it's a i7, with 6GB of ram. It's hard to believe it takes so long to open the start menu or just a folder. Oh yeah, other thing: another friend bought an used laptop which had some insider preview enabled. 3 weeks ago her microphone just stopped working. Apparently you cannot remove an insider win10 build WITHOUT REINSTALLING. I was not able to fix it. I'm not even a maintenance guy.

derefr 7y ago
> Apparently you cannot remove an insider win10 build WITHOUT REINSTALLING. Well, yeah. If a beta takes a wrong direction in the design of a new on-disk data structure, do you really expect them to write a reverse-migration that turns it back into the old format? That's a lot of work for a tiny point-release on branch of development they're not even sure they're going to make public. No commercial OS supports this.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  They could've warned instead of defaulting to failure. I wish they'd ease up with signing core system files with short-lived certs either; I once had to reinstall my PC after not booting into Windows for ~3 months - when I tried to start Windows after that break, I discovered some core DLLs had expired certificates, preventing the system from booting.
pvg 7y ago
Apparently you cannot remove an insider win10 build WITHOUT REINSTALLING. You can go to the previous install you had quite painlessly. It's in 'recovery options'. You don't need to set a restore point, it just works.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]