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Semi unrelated, but I recently used a windows 7 computer and was astonished that upon plugging in a usb stick, it popped up a notice telling me it was installin

Semi unrelated, but I recently used a windows 7 computer and was astonished that upon plugging in a usb stick, it popped up a notice telling me it was installing a driver for it, rather than just immediately working. I'm sure this is fixed in the newer versions, but I always assumed this would have been fixed in vista at the latest for standard devices (I jumped ship to linux during the XP era)

TylerE 6y ago
There are some issues with vanilla USB around supporting large devices. Unlikely to be an issue with a stick, but very possible with an external drive. So searching for a device specfic driver is a very sane default here.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  No, it's just bad policy. The correct design on modern "intelligent" buses is very simple. You standardize a class of device, and then you implement that class, OS vendors supply a class driver that works, out of the box, with every device in the class. USB Mass Storage is the worst case of that approach (vendors with different ideas of how to solve it just agreed to differ and the standard offers all combinations of their preferred methods) but it's still better than the alternative. Other approaches are crazy, they produce a worse user experience and usually introduce perverse incentives that make life worse for everybody. If there are in fact "issues" with "vanilla USB" you don't fix those by having every single vendor hand roll their own attempted workaround and ship each of them.
  - TylerE 6y ago
    How is an approach that results in a working device "crazy", where one that will sometimes NOT "not crazy". The user does not give a flying fig about your "moral high ground". They just want their drive to work.
    - tialaramex 6y ago
      Your approach doesn't result in "a working device" for most users, it results in the situation where you need to buy a new device, to get a new driver, to fix a purely software bug that could have been fixed in the class driver covering your old device instead but that was less profitable and priority #1 is always to bow before the almighty dollar. Every time Windows ships a new version, users with hardware that worked fine but alas, wasn't shifting too many new units through retail, find now it doesn't work. "Buy a new one, then you'll get updated drivers" people like you cry. More landfill, for no reason. Real users hate this experience and are relieved when you tell them that some device they're getting doesn't "need drivers". Of course it does actually need drivers, it just uses the OS vendor's class drivers, which work out of the box and are properly maintained, but the user experience is of relief.
Osiris 6y ago
The drivers it installs is often a built-in Windows/Microsoft driver. It's easy to see in the Device Manager. It's just windows works differently. Every device that's connected first registers as am unknown device and then Windows searches all currently installed drivers for one that matches and configures the system to use that driver for the device. It's not "installing" a driver as much as "assigning" a driver.
p_l 6y ago
What happens is essentially Windows registering the device instance in the configuration - the driver etc is already there, it just follows "new device attached -> discover applicable driver from known installed set -> attach the driver to this instance of device". Newer Windows versions simply hid the behaviour, while windows 7 is the last one to not hide it.

TylerE 6y ago

There are some issues with vanilla USB around supporting large devices. Unlikely to be an issue with a stick, but very possible with an external drive. So searching for a device specfic driver is a very sane default here.

tialaramex 6y ago
No, it's just bad policy. The correct design on modern "intelligent" buses is very simple. You standardize a class of device, and then you implement that class, OS vendors supply a class driver that works, out of the box, with every device in the class. USB Mass Storage is the worst case of that approach (vendors with different ideas of how to solve it just agreed to differ and the standard offers all combinations of their preferred methods) but it's still better than the alternative. Other approaches are crazy, they produce a worse user experience and usually introduce perverse incentives that make life worse for everybody. If there are in fact "issues" with "vanilla USB" you don't fix those by having every single vendor hand roll their own attempted workaround and ship each of them.
- TylerE 6y ago
  How is an approach that results in a working device "crazy", where one that will sometimes NOT "not crazy". The user does not give a flying fig about your "moral high ground". They just want their drive to work.
  - tialaramex 6y ago
    Your approach doesn't result in "a working device" for most users, it results in the situation where you need to buy a new device, to get a new driver, to fix a purely software bug that could have been fixed in the class driver covering your old device instead but that was less profitable and priority #1 is always to bow before the almighty dollar. Every time Windows ships a new version, users with hardware that worked fine but alas, wasn't shifting too many new units through retail, find now it doesn't work. "Buy a new one, then you'll get updated drivers" people like you cry. More landfill, for no reason. Real users hate this experience and are relieved when you tell them that some device they're getting doesn't "need drivers". Of course it does actually need drivers, it just uses the OS vendor's class drivers, which work out of the box and are properly maintained, but the user experience is of relief.

Osiris 6y ago

The drivers it installs is often a built-in Windows/Microsoft driver. It's easy to see in the Device Manager. It's just windows works differently. Every device that's connected first registers as am unknown device and then Windows searches all currently installed drivers for one that matches and configures the system to use that driver for the device. It's not "installing" a driver as much as "assigning" a driver.

p_l 6y ago

What happens is essentially Windows registering the device instance in the configuration - the driver etc is already there, it just follows "new device attached -> discover applicable driver from known installed set -> attach the driver to this instance of device". Newer Windows versions simply hid the behaviour, while windows 7 is the last one to not hide it.