Problems with Drivers

As other parts of this writeup point out, adding all of this unnecessary overhead and complexity to device drivers costs time and money. The result is that many Vista drivers, particularly for the 64-bit version, are nowhere near ready even after Vista has already been released. There's even a special site set up where people can report which Vista drivers currently work for them, one list for 32-bit Vista drivers and another for 64-bit Vista drivers (note how short the list is for the 64-bit drivers, with major vendors like nVidia being completely absent). Numerous indications I've seen, ranging from public analyses through to private comments from driver developers are that it's going to be about the middle of the year before the drivers for video cards are fully reliable. As of this writing, major vendors like nVidia (graphics) and Creative Labs (sound) still don't have their Vista drivers ready. For example nVidia only has beta (pre-release) drivers available from its web site (and a pending class-action lawsuit to match). Even large companies like Dell and Gateway are admitting that Vista's graphics drivers just aren't ready yet, resulting in them holding back shipping Vista upgrades to people who have already ordered (and paid for) them. For example you can't buy Dell's top-of-the-line XPS 710 PC with Vista installed because there are no graphics drivers for it.

Sigh, we blissfully recall all the years we have been beta testing Microsoft OS's and how wonderful the driver situations were for Windows 2000, and Windows XP x64, and 2003 Server x64. Wait?? I must have been imagining that. All of those situations sucked pretty badly, with the Windows 2000 launch sucking far worse than any of them. At this point in the game, a couple of month's deep, driver support has matured at a phenomenal rate. Surprisingly so for x64 Vista, considering hardly anyone is actually buying it. There's little compelling reason or need for a 64bit version of ....ANYTHING....quite yet, insofar as the disaffected premium content consumer is concerned.

An additional reason for the driver backlog is that 64-bit versions of Vista (which will be displacing the 32-bit versions within the next few years as everyone moves to 64-bit platforms) will only load drivers signed by Microsoft (there's a special debug mode invoked by hitting F8 on boot or using the /TESTSIGN flag that allows you to load unsigned drivers on a one-off basis for debugging purposes, but this gets disabled again at the next reboot, and, if you haven't already guessed it, premium content playback is disabled completely in this mode). This means that no drivers that potentially threaten premium content can be loaded. A downside of this is that an enormous mass of third-party drivers that haven't passed through Microsoft's approval process can't be used under 64-bit Vista, and because of the time and money involved in the approval process may never end up running under Vista.

Vista x64 requires drivers with a validated digital signature approved by Microsoft. Yes this is a pain in the neck to an extent. No, this isn't the same as mandating WHQL certification. And yes, this requirement can be disabled in the boot configuration with 3rd party software tools that have been available since long before Vista shipped and will remain functional after a reboot. Tis how we shoehorned Widcomm Bluetooth XP drivers on the very Vista system this article is being written on. We've since upgraded to signed Vista x64 drivers. Regardless of all of this, surely a cryptology expert could see the positive reasoning behind requiring a driver have a valid and verified digital signature before being allowed to get all warm and gooey with the OS kernel?

Why is this a problem? Because the vast majority of drivers running on PCs today aren't signed, not so much because the developers couldn't be bothered but because the WHQL process that produces the signed drivers is so slow that they're obsolete by the time they've been approved by Microsoft (and even some of the WHQL-certified ones are still pretty flaky). As a result, vendors supply current but unsigned drivers, a practice so widespread that instructions on bypassing the warning dialog that pops up are a standard part of most device install instructions (you can use Google to find endless examples of the use of unsigned drivers. One quick example of a large, well-known vendor doing this is AGFA). Almost the entire PC industry relies on users clicking Continue in response to the unsigned-driver warning so that the driver can load anyway. This situation is so common that you'll see it written up in computer books and covered in Windows install guides. At the moment the problem with unsigned drivers isn't too visible as people seem to be avoiding 64-bit Vista because of the driver issues, but the inability to load drivers that haven't been through Microsoft's approval process is likely to become a serious headache when its use becomes more widespread. At some point something will have to give in order for Vista to have viable 64-bit driver support. It remains to be seen whether content protection or device support will prove the bigger hammer in this tug-of-war. 

The fact that x64 isn't widely being adopted has far more to do with the fact it brings too little to the table as of yet, than a lack of driver support. Driver support for x64 is surprisingly good considering Microsoft's history with the x64 platform, and especially considering the lack of market penetration. Market forces will dictate the rate at which x64 becomes the platform of choice.

(Having said that, Vista isn't the only OS that's being hurt by short-sighted decisions about driver handling. Linux is also going to run into this problem in the near future with its planned refusal to load non-GPL'd drivers).

This assumes "Linux" is one thing, and it's anything but. Different distributions are communicating somewhat conflicting (and stubborn) takes on this issue, but this is one of the systemic flaws of the Linux universe as well. Some statements taken out of context in regards to Ubuntu Linux and the use of closed source drivers have been clarified by Ubuntu's founder, Mark Shuttleworth, for instance.  

It's no secret that the interpretation of copyright law has gotten out of hand, primarily because the historical tenets of classical copyright law are hard to ameliorate in the modern digital era. We published an entire article about this last year. Apologies, we're drifting from the "Vista" thing again aren't we?