Acer won't support Vista. Full Stop. Have laptops with ATI
cards/chips that are now totally unsupported.

On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:22:50 -0700, "Timothy Davis [MSFT]"
wrote:

The reason that ATI does not want to post drivers to WU is because ATI does
not sell hardware directly to consumers. ATI/AMD sells hardware to
resellers and to OEMs, who in turn support the end user.
--

Barb Bowman
MS-MVP
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/e...ts/bowman.mspx
http://blogs.digitalmediaphile.com/barb/
http://digitalmediaphile.wordpress.com

Although your explanation is plausible, it contradicts the fact that just
recently this was on WU:

ATI Technologies Inc. - Display - ASUS X1950 Series
Installation date: ?8/?11/?2008 10:15 pm
Installation status: Successful
Update type: Optional
ATI Technologies Inc. Display software update released in June, 2008


"Timothy Davis [MSFT]" wrote in message
...
While technically correct, this is not the actual reason.

Almost all versions of the ATI drivers have gone throught the WHQL
process, and anything that ATI/AMD posts to their website will be WHQL
signed.

The reason that ATI does not want to post drivers to WU is because ATI
does not sell hardware directly to consumers. ATI/AMD sells hardware to
resellers and to OEMs, who in turn support the end user. If ATI were to
post a bad driver to WU, OEMs like Dell would get the support call. This
is the same deal for most hardware manufacturers.

Here is a useful bit of information related to PCI hardwareIDs:

The full PCI hardwareID of a device will contain information about who
manufactured a device, and who the manufacturer resold the device to:

Example:

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0422&SUBSYS_C7353842&REV_A1

VEN_10DE is the PCI registration for NVIDIA INC. The Subsystem Vendor ID
(3842, in this case) is the company NVIDIA resold the chipset to. A visit
to www.pcisig.com (membership tab, vidsearch menu option) tells me that
3842 is the hex value for "eVGA.com Corporation". It is this corporation
that is really responsible for providing me driver updates.


"Rich." wrote in message
. ..
Because Microsoft only posts certified updates. Because of that you have
to wait until the new driver has passed the lab tests and gets certified
by Microsoft before they'll post it.


"md" wrote in message
...
When you use Device Manager to check for a new ATI driver, in this
case for an x1600 Pro, Windows Update reports the latest version is
installed version 8.391.0.0 dated 6/26/2007.

But according to ATI's Web site, the latest version is 8.9.

Why doesn't ATI push the latest driver to Windows Update -- so it
would be easy for everyone to make sure they have the latest driver --
and to easily install it?

"md" wrote in message
...
So, to upgrade the driver, instead of using Windows Update, one would
double-click on the executable: 8-9_vista32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_68905?

Yes, after downloading the file to your computer.

In message "Rich."
wrote:

Although your explanation is plausible, it contradicts the fact that just
recently this was on WU:

ATI Technologies Inc. - Display - ASUS X1950 Series
Installation date: ?8/?11/?2008 10:15 pm
Installation status: Successful
Update type: Optional
ATI Technologies Inc. Display software update released in June, 2008

Not at all, this release is by ASUS, not ATI, which falls into the "It
is this corporation that is really responsible for providing me driver
updates." category.

This is exactly what happened - in fact I was the person who pushed this
driver to WU (I no longer work in that group).

When Vista launched, there was an effort to have as many devices supported
by either inbox drivers (ships with Windows), or pushed to Windows Update.
We worked with many of our hardware partners to accomplish this, and
significantly increased our device coverage metrics.

The downside is that many of our partners are not leveraging the tools we
put in place to update the content on WU. This means that many of the
drivers that are on WU are not the latest drivers.

There are projects in place that will give incentive for hardware partners
to maintain the latest drivers on WU - so this is something that is being
addressed going forward.


"DevilsPGD" wrote in message
...
In message "Rich."
wrote:

Although your explanation is plausible, it contradicts the fact that just
recently this was on WU:

ATI Technologies Inc. - Display - ASUS X1950 Series
Installation date: ?8/?11/?2008 10:15 pm
Installation status: Successful
Update type: Optional
ATI Technologies Inc. Display software update released in June, 2008

Not at all, this release is by ASUS, not ATI, which falls into the "It
is this corporation that is really responsible for providing me driver
updates." category.