6 ms·

Removal of unwanted drivers from Windows Update

51 points by zdw 1y ago

neuroelectron 1y ago
Yes, I have business justification. Wink wink We do the eavesdropping and act as a liability shield. Here's our "debug" mode and a bit extra for the effort.
zelphirkalt 1y ago
How about first fixing, that Windows update is automatically installing inappropriate drivers for my graphics card, causing system instability and freezes? How about first fixing your shit, MS?
- greggsy 1y ago
  GPU drivers are some of the most complex and frequently updated pieces of code in the industry. I blame the manufacturers for failing to deliver stable products, rather than putting all the blame on windows for delivering drivers to you that were submitted to them by the manufacturer through WHQL arrangements.
  - cubefox 1y ago
    GPU drivers also routinely fix buggy or inefficient shader code in individual computer games, at least for popular ones. GPU drivers are doing more than what would reasonably expected of them.
    - mananaysiempre 1y ago
      And that’s when what is reasonably expected of them is an optimizing compiler for multiple languages, an execution environment providing isolation among instances of arbitrary mutually untrusting code (generated by that compiler), a resource scheduler, etc.
  - zelphirkalt 1y ago
    I think this is somewhat misunderstanding my complaint. When I download the AMD drivers directly from AMD websites, they are fine mostly. It is just that Windows every now and then decides to replace them with the shit that comes with Windows update. I never tell it to do that and it acts in such an idiotic way.
- londons_explore 1y ago
  MS could easily say "If users with your driver installed have more than a 10% higher reboot/app crash/windows reinstall/BSOD rate than typical users, then your company will be fined $1 per computer affected per month till the issue is resolved.". Suddenly every company would be putting loads more effort into battle testing their drivers when there is a financial cost to buggy code.
  - shakna 1y ago
    I think instead every company would suddenly be releasing their own Linux or BSD, and/or lobbying the government to break Microsoft up for being a monopoly. It'd be cheaper.
    - bloomingeek 1y ago
      Here, here! It's time for an operating system revolution, nothing too radical, just enough to secure up company info. I realize this would be really difficult, but don't businesses see that MS wants even more control over their computers? How can any company trust their secret communications about an innovation that could be a boon for profits and expansion ever trust MS not to be spying on them? (Surely MS doesn't collaborate with the feds, which could possibly use this info to sabotage a company they don't like?!?)
      - shakna 1y ago
        Trusting MS means being able to strip down your own security teams. Right now, MS invading everything saves money on experts. (Yes, short term vision. But that's normal.) Business is usually willing to give up control if it directly increases profits.
- thrownaway561 1y ago
  You can turn that off and not have drivers installed through Windows Update. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/disable-driver-updates/63957b76-b55c-4c59-93f0-72835e9b2fff https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/disabl...
  - zelphirkalt 1y ago
    What an intuitive way to wrench back control over installed drivers. Thank you, anyway.
    - unaindz 1y ago
      And often it doesn't even work.
kotaKat 1y ago
Does this include going back through and ensuring they're removing malicious drivers left behind (like from the FTDI driver-bricking fiasco... numerous times over)?
proactivesvcs 1y ago
"What category of drivers are targeted in the first cut of the cleanup? The first phase targets legacy drivers that have newer replacements already on Windows Update." It'd be useful if they listed information about the other phases; the proposal for this phase seems pretty sensible and I'm surprised they have only now started thinking about it.
londons_explore 1y ago
To my knowledge, windows update always only offers the latest version of a driver for a bit of hardware... Is there even a UI for a user to select an older driver version from windows update?? I know you can do it if you manually get a .inf file, but thats a different flow. If not, what exactly is this announcement saying? "Stuff that a user isn't able to install right now won't be available for a user to install in the future"?
- ninjaoxygen 1y ago
  At the very least Windows Update can offer you two versions, a stable version of the driver and a newer but potentially less stable version through the "Optional Driver Updates" page in Windows Update.
  - BrandoElFollito 1y ago
    That would require the vendor to provide such versions. I do not think I ever saw that
- Maxious 1y ago
  https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com still lives in it's 2000s glory
  - keyringlight 1y ago
    I'd be interested to know what effort would be needed to decouple the manual download database from what is connected to WU within currently supported versions of windows, presumably they've already got some way of filtering off which drivers they want to keep live. I think MS could handle the download cost of old drivers when a lot of them can be smaller than an average modern webpage. I guess it comes down to the question of how much MS cares about old hard/software past its support window, versus delegating that to third party sites like vogons.org and praying someone has the relevant file still available.
    - 1y ago
rkagerer 1y ago
Great. So if I interpret this correctly, when companies go out of business (or drop support for product lines), your perfectly functional hardware will now inevitably stop working (or not be installable after you reformat your OS). Welcome another step down the path toward a world where you don't really own your hardware and your vendor dictates how, when and what you can use ("we control the horizontal, we control the vertical"). There are already some great comments in that thread, like this thoughtful one: While having a well organized and updated driver catalog is undoubtedly a good thing, please spare a thought for curators of vintage PC collections. The Windows Update Driver catalog is a near unrivaled resource on the internet for known good drivers, and is a great source for drivers where the original manufactures have either removed the drivers from their own websites, or they no longer exist. Personally I always hated the idea of using Windows Update as your warehouse for drivers in the first place. Much better to keep your own collection. (Yes, it takes some work to curate and periodically update).
- neilv 1y ago
  Here's a PC driver bundle that runs great, without artificially forced obsolescence: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/ https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/
  - DougN7 1y ago
    Just curious if Linux includes drivers for 20 year old hardware and if there is some guarantee somewhere that old drivers will be available forever.
    - jpgvm 1y ago
      Yes and no. There is plenty of 20 year old HW that has drivers in Linux but their continued existence in the tree is predicated on them being maintained.
    - alyandon 1y ago
      Unfortunately, there is no guarantee. If the maintainer for a driver stops maintaining it and no one else steps in to pick up the work then eventually it'll get removed if it isn't widely used.
Havoc 1y ago
Seems like this would result in a ton of printers etc hitting landfills
- guidedlight 1y ago
  Would it? Printers are a great example. Almost every printer made in the last 20 years supports at least PCL6 perfectly fine. Why do we still need thousands of proprietary drivers, when just one will do?

51 points by zdw 1y ago

Yes, I have business justification. Wink wink We do the eavesdropping and act as a liability shield. Here's our "debug" mode and a bit extra for the effort.

zelphirkalt 1y ago

How about first fixing, that Windows update is automatically installing inappropriate drivers for my graphics card, causing system instability and freezes? How about first fixing your shit, MS?

greggsy 1y ago
GPU drivers are some of the most complex and frequently updated pieces of code in the industry. I blame the manufacturers for failing to deliver stable products, rather than putting all the blame on windows for delivering drivers to you that were submitted to them by the manufacturer through WHQL arrangements.
- cubefox 1y ago
  GPU drivers also routinely fix buggy or inefficient shader code in individual computer games, at least for popular ones. GPU drivers are doing more than what would reasonably expected of them.
  - mananaysiempre 1y ago
    And that’s when what is reasonably expected of them is an optimizing compiler for multiple languages, an execution environment providing isolation among instances of arbitrary mutually untrusting code (generated by that compiler), a resource scheduler, etc.
- zelphirkalt 1y ago
  I think this is somewhat misunderstanding my complaint. When I download the AMD drivers directly from AMD websites, they are fine mostly. It is just that Windows every now and then decides to replace them with the shit that comes with Windows update. I never tell it to do that and it acts in such an idiotic way.
londons_explore 1y ago
MS could easily say "If users with your driver installed have more than a 10% higher reboot/app crash/windows reinstall/BSOD rate than typical users, then your company will be fined $1 per computer affected per month till the issue is resolved.". Suddenly every company would be putting loads more effort into battle testing their drivers when there is a financial cost to buggy code.
- shakna 1y ago
  I think instead every company would suddenly be releasing their own Linux or BSD, and/or lobbying the government to break Microsoft up for being a monopoly. It'd be cheaper.
  - bloomingeek 1y ago
    Here, here! It's time for an operating system revolution, nothing too radical, just enough to secure up company info. I realize this would be really difficult, but don't businesses see that MS wants even more control over their computers? How can any company trust their secret communications about an innovation that could be a boon for profits and expansion ever trust MS not to be spying on them? (Surely MS doesn't collaborate with the feds, which could possibly use this info to sabotage a company they don't like?!?)
    - shakna 1y ago
      Trusting MS means being able to strip down your own security teams. Right now, MS invading everything saves money on experts. (Yes, short term vision. But that's normal.) Business is usually willing to give up control if it directly increases profits.
thrownaway561 1y ago
You can turn that off and not have drivers installed through Windows Update. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/disable-driver-updates/63957b76-b55c-4c59-93f0-72835e9b2fff https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/disabl...
- zelphirkalt 1y ago
  What an intuitive way to wrench back control over installed drivers. Thank you, anyway.
  - unaindz 1y ago
    And often it doesn't even work.

kotaKat 1y ago

Does this include going back through and ensuring they're removing malicious drivers left behind (like from the FTDI driver-bricking fiasco... numerous times over)?

proactivesvcs 1y ago

"What category of drivers are targeted in the first cut of the cleanup? The first phase targets legacy drivers that have newer replacements already on Windows Update." It'd be useful if they listed information about the other phases; the proposal for this phase seems pretty sensible and I'm surprised they have only now started thinking about it.

londons_explore 1y ago

To my knowledge, windows update always only offers the latest version of a driver for a bit of hardware... Is there even a UI for a user to select an older driver version from windows update?? I know you can do it if you manually get a .inf file, but thats a different flow. If not, what exactly is this announcement saying? "Stuff that a user isn't able to install right now won't be available for a user to install in the future"?

ninjaoxygen 1y ago
At the very least Windows Update can offer you two versions, a stable version of the driver and a newer but potentially less stable version through the "Optional Driver Updates" page in Windows Update.
- BrandoElFollito 1y ago
  That would require the vendor to provide such versions. I do not think I ever saw that
Maxious 1y ago
https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com still lives in it's 2000s glory
- keyringlight 1y ago
  I'd be interested to know what effort would be needed to decouple the manual download database from what is connected to WU within currently supported versions of windows, presumably they've already got some way of filtering off which drivers they want to keep live. I think MS could handle the download cost of old drivers when a lot of them can be smaller than an average modern webpage. I guess it comes down to the question of how much MS cares about old hard/software past its support window, versus delegating that to third party sites like vogons.org and praying someone has the relevant file still available.
  - 1y ago

rkagerer 1y ago

Great. So if I interpret this correctly, when companies go out of business (or drop support for product lines), your perfectly functional hardware will now inevitably stop working (or not be installable after you reformat your OS). Welcome another step down the path toward a world where you don't really own your hardware and your vendor dictates how, when and what you can use ("we control the horizontal, we control the vertical"). There are already some great comments in that thread, like this thoughtful one: While having a well organized and updated driver catalog is undoubtedly a good thing, please spare a thought for curators of vintage PC collections. The Windows Update Driver catalog is a near unrivaled resource on the internet for known good drivers, and is a great source for drivers where the original manufactures have either removed the drivers from their own websites, or they no longer exist. Personally I always hated the idea of using Windows Update as your warehouse for drivers in the first place. Much better to keep your own collection. (Yes, it takes some work to curate and periodically update).

neilv 1y ago
Here's a PC driver bundle that runs great, without artificially forced obsolescence: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/ https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/
- DougN7 1y ago
  Just curious if Linux includes drivers for 20 year old hardware and if there is some guarantee somewhere that old drivers will be available forever.
  - jpgvm 1y ago
    Yes and no. There is plenty of 20 year old HW that has drivers in Linux but their continued existence in the tree is predicated on them being maintained.
  - alyandon 1y ago
    Unfortunately, there is no guarantee. If the maintainer for a driver stops maintaining it and no one else steps in to pick up the work then eventually it'll get removed if it isn't widely used.

Havoc 1y ago

Seems like this would result in a ton of printers etc hitting landfills

guidedlight 1y ago
Would it? Printers are a great example. Almost every printer made in the last 20 years supports at least PCL6 perfectly fine. Why do we still need thousands of proprietary drivers, when just one will do?