DAMN Seriously.... installing drivers is becoming worse than installing a whole OS

[Arcadio]

I remember back in the day when installing drivers took literally less than 10 seconds from the moment when you clicked "install"...

Now there's this mammoth driver package you must download just for the "Basic Printer and Scanner Driver". If it's basic, why is it 60MB? Yeah, sure, Cable and DSL is very popular nowadays, but still....

OK, so downloading is done, now installing should take a minute or so, right? NOooooo... first the package must be "optimized", which takes forever. Then when this "optimization" is done, the installer "Gets ready to install", then "generate script", then a bunch of other useless steps that take forever....

OK, the installer says "connect device"... ok, connected. But why does the printer needs like 10 minutes to get ready. Several noises coming from the printer tell you that it's doing something, but why is it taking so long?

And the worst part: the installer gets stuck at 12% and does absolutely NOTHING. You check the task manager: 99% System idle. Check the drive activity led on the front of the PC: not blinking. Installer must've crashed.... So let's close it and retry..... uhhh, where's the cancel button? Fuck it, I'll just End-program it. Restart the computer and guess what: another program analyzes what went wrong. Guess what: that process itself takes forever. "Gathering error reports", "Analyzing logs", wtf??

Remember that I said that the previous part was the worst? Actually, no. This is the worst: the program that analyzes what went wrong ACTUALLY FROZE. It wasn't responding... it got stuck!! I was patient enough to wait, but it just froze. . I literally prayed that there was no program that analyzes what went wrong with this "error analyzer"...

OH, and this was on a pentium 4 pc with fresh XP install.




EDIT: Serious thread. Reps to randay for reminding me.

 

[randay]

SERIOUS?

 

[Barfo]

Originally posted by: Arcadio
I remember back in the day when installing drivers took literally less than 10 seconds

Yeah, stupid plug and play has made our lives miserable :roll:

 

[Crusty]

PEBKAC

 

[Rubycon]

Flash memory is cheap.

For hp and others with ginormous bloatware crap what they should do is put it on flash. So when you plug in your device it mounts it as removable storage and autoplay starts the install shield wizard. No more install disks and no more 600MB downloads for their fecal drivers. Logitech should do the same thing with cordless dongles! If you don't use mouseware you can use the receiver as a flash drive.

 

[Arcadio]

Originally posted by: Rubycon
Flash memory is cheap.

For hp and others with ginormous bloatware crap what they should do is put it on flash. So when you plug in your device it mounts it as removable storage and autoplay starts the install shield wizard. No more install disks and no more 600MB downloads for their fecal drivers. Logitech should do the same thing with cordless dongles! If you don't use mouseware you can use the receiver as a flash drive.

Creative does this with some products. Good idea.

 

[hanoverphist]

one of my guys restarted an install for a custom printer 4 times before calling me. i remoted in, started the installer and let it run. told him to not touch it until i told him. it was writing registry shit, took about 6 or 7 minutes and finally moved the status bar. same thing with the task mgr tho, sys idle was 99% for a long time while it thought about what it wanted to do. the whole process took about 40 minutes to complete. sometimes patience is a good thing.

 

[OCGuy]

Reps harcadio

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Originally posted by: Crusty
PEBKAC

:laugh:

 

[Kaido]

Mac ftw

 

[xanis]

Originally posted by: Kaido
Mac ftw

Down boy, down! This is not the time or place!

 

[Fayd]

Originally posted by: Rubycon
Flash memory is cheap.

For hp and others with ginormous bloatware crap what they should do is put it on flash. So when you plug in your device it mounts it as removable storage and autoplay starts the install shield wizard. No more install disks and no more 600MB downloads for their fecal drivers. Logitech should do the same thing with cordless dongles! If you don't use mouseware you can use the receiver as a flash drive.

how you gonna update drivers?

and then every device you have connected through USB has become a drive, taking a drive letter?

if you get a virus, it hides itself on one or all of these drives?

bad idea. i like my printer the way it is. well, maybe not the way it is. i wish HP would actually make stable drivers.

 

[wwswimming]

Originally posted by: RubyconNo more install disks and no more 600MB downloads for their fecal drivers.

classic !

computers have a near infinite ability to cause the raising of blood pressure & the taking of the lord's name in vain.

it's better to step away from the diabolical machine before it has a chance to shorten your life-span & tighten your digestive system sphincters.

oh, and Vista SUCKS.

 

[Chiropteran]

Originally posted by: Kaido
Mac ftw

Yeah, if you don't support any hardware you don't need drivers.

 

[Fayd]

Originally posted by: wwswimming

Originally posted by: RubyconNo more install disks and no more 600MB downloads for their fecal drivers.

classic !

computers have a near infinite ability to cause the raising of blood pressure & the taking of the lord's name in vain.

it's better to step away from the diabolical machine before it has a chance to shorten your life-span & tighten your digestive system sphincters.

oh, and Vista SUCKS.

... i like vista.

i agree with the op in that drivers are overly bloated. but most of that bloat is language packs, and help and support... (which SHOULD just stay as a webpage on the manufacturer's site.)

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: Fayd

how you gonna update drivers?

and then every device you have connected through USB has become a drive, taking a drive letter?

if you get a virus, it hides itself on one or all of these drives?

bad idea. i like my printer the way it is. well, maybe not the way it is. i wish HP would actually make stable drivers.

You would get updates any other way you do through the web. This would get you up and running and never worry about a lost disk. It would not take a drive letter all the time - once the drivers are installed it could dismount itself and only mount if it detected there were no drivers, etc.

Get used to it because it's already happening. As mentioned CL has a Xfi to go featuring this, Magic Jack has since day one and now broadband cards are doing it as well. That's where it's really important because without the drivers those peripherals are useless and usually it means you don't have an internet connection if you're installing one in the first place!

Viruses? Who honestly has this problem? Any good IT infrastructure will stop this kind of stuff from reaching your network long before it gets to the client machines. Common sense goes a long ways too.

Speaking of bloat in general they really need to stop attaching useless stuff like MSN/Yahoo toolbars to the Java updates and other stuff you MUST download in a package before you UNCHECK the option to install it! Not everyone has a 1Gbps synchronous pipe! :roll:

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: Fayd
how you gonna update drivers?

and then every device you have connected through USB has become a drive, taking a drive letter?

if you get a virus, it hides itself on one or all of these drives?

bad idea. i like my printer the way it is. well, maybe not the way it is. i wish HP would actually make stable drivers.

To update drivers, just download them from the internet. Drivers *should* be provided on-board for USB devices -- drivers that will at least make the product functional. Doesn't have to include everything, if the manufacturer doesn't want to.

And no, it doesn't have to take a drive letter. It can also be read-only, so it doesn't obtain any malware. I can't remember whether it's my Palm Treo Pro, or some other device I recently bought, but some manufacturer implemented this, and I LOVE them for it.

My opinion: multi-function printers are ALL junk. I've yet to see a single one that didn't have extremely bloated and sometimes buggy software. I use a Canon Pixma 530, and it's the best MFP I've seen to date, but it's far from perfect. As a result I only recommend separate devices for printing, scanning, etc. It's unfortunate, but oh well. It could be solved *so easily* with some decent drivers.

(Sorry Rubycon, I didn't see your post before I started typing.)

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Windows 7 should have most drivers

 

[Snapster]

Transactional multilingual installers is what they are and if created correctly they are useful for updating/rolling back versions. However 90% of them are badly done and just waste space/time on your system and in most cases are not updated enough to warrant the means of doing so.

 

[lokiju]

I just download the install packs.

Extract using 7zip and then point to the inf and delete the install when done.

 

[LTC8K6]

Got a new Brother label printer with a basic driver package in it's flash memory. Just plug it in to any computer, and it's good to go. Never worry about installing a driver.

It can still be reflashed for updates, too.

It's cool.

 

[LTC8K6]

Clarification, not only is the driver in the Brother's memory, but so is the basic printing application.

No drive letter is used.

 

[PingSpike]

Agree with rant...its like the fuckers are just wasting space because they can. It probably wasn't the case for you but a lot of times you can peel the needed driver files out of the bloated 60mb exe and just install it the normal way. I've done that quite a few times because that 60mb exe usually installs like 12 horseshit programs I'm never going to use and sets them all to autoload on startup. Is it any wonder that most PCs are all fucked up with craplets? The shit payload is coming in fucking driver packages now.

 

[Arcadio]

Originally posted by: lokiju
I just download the install packs.

Extract using 7zip and then point to the inf and delete the install when done.

Will try that. I've always wondered if that method would work without any side-effects..

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Chiropteran

Originally posted by: Kaido
Mac ftw

Yeah, if you don't support any hardware you don't need drivers.

:laugh: