Microsoft says it has not yet finished work on Windows 7 and contrary to rumors on the Internet, the final version of the OS code was not released to manufacturers this week. Microsoft wants to take the time it needs to clear as many last-minute problems as possible before it makes the OS available for manufacturers. Microsoft does not want to repeat the Windows Vista disasters, including incompatible or missing drivers, instability in the core operating system and other issues that ensured that Microsoft Vista was never widely adopted.

RTM Release Expected Within Weeks

The company has said that it will announce the release of the OS to the manufacturers when it happens, and it expects to do that within the next few weeks. The company has already said that it will release the OS to the general public on October 22. The company has concluded the Windows 7 pre-sale and has also said that it will delay reporting that revenue until the fourth quarter.

Driver problems, which plagued Windows Vista from the beginning, are receiving special attention from Microsoft. The company announced last month that vendors that expect to keep their Vista-Certified label will need to certify that their drivers also work with Windows 7. Manufacturers whose drivers are found lacking will have until the official release date of Windows 7 to correct their driver problems.

Users cited the lack of drivers as a major reason for not adopting Vista. Windows 7 is built on the Vista platform, but early evaluations show that Windows 7 is faster and more stable than Windows Vista or Windows XP.

The company has placed a sunset date on the purchase of downgrade rights to Windows XP and will encourage users to move to Windows Vista or Windows 7 rather than remaining with or downgrading to Windows XP. Many corporate users won’t be seeing Windows 7 right away. The majority of corporate licensees say they’re in no hurry to adopt the new platform. While the cost of upgrading is not substantial, most corporate users don’t see an incremental benefit to moving to the new operating system.

Windows 7 will come in three flavors: Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate. As with Vista, Microsoft expects home users to drive Windows 7 adoption initially, but the company hopes to woo its corporate/enterprise users within 18 months of the OS’s release.
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If you’ve attached hardware devices to your computer and then later changed the hardware configuration, or retired the device, the driver you added to your OS may still be lurking. Ordinarily, this shouldn’t cause problems, but if a hidden driver accidentally becomes enabled, you may find that your computer takes a significant performance hit, starts to behave strangely or crashes during certain operations.

Making Hidden Drivers Visible

You may stray into the Device Manager, only to discover that the device driver doesn’t appear in the list of active drivers. That doesn’t mean the driver is gone, however. The Device Manager will “hide” drivers that belong to “non-present” devices. This could lead you to believe that the driver isn’t installed, when in fact, it’s installed and wreaking havoc on your system!

How do you get hidden drivers to show up in the Device Manager? You need to set an environment variable to force the Device Manager to show all of the drivers it knows about, instead of just the ones in use for devices that are physically attached to your computer.

Adding an environment variable sounds complicated, but it’s not. Go to the Start menu and right-click on Computer. Select Properties. On the left side of the panel that appears, choose the “Advanced System Settings” link. The computer will issue a User Account Control dialogue box that says “Windows needs your permission to continue.” Select Continue.

The Properties panel is divided into a number of tabs. On the “Advanced” tab at the bottom, you’ll find a button labeled “Environment Variables.” Select it.

The Environment Variables dialogue box will open. It’s divided into two panes; the first one controls user variables that apply only to the user that’s logged in. The second pane is a System variables pane that will apply to all user accounts. In this case, you’ll want to make the hidden device drivers visible to any user, so select the New button below the System variables box.

Enter devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices and enter a variable value of 1. Click OK on all open dialogue boxes. This change will force the Device Manager to show all hidden device drivers. Once these drivers are visible, you can use the Device Manager to remove old, unwanted, duplicate or orphaned drivers.

Device management programs like Driver Detective can also help you manage your drivers, whether they’re visible or hidden. Driver Detective will monitor and update your drivers, replace drivers that have been deleted or corrupted and remove drivers that are no longer needed.

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If you upgraded to Microsoft Vista when it was first released, the announcement that a new Windows OS is on the way may not exactly thrill you. When Microsoft Vista was first released, early adopters ran into the unenviable problem of being unable to find drivers for their hardware. Worse, some hardware was labeled “Vista-capable” when it really wasn’t. The overall effect of the troubles led to a large-scale rejection of Windows Vista. Few corporations chose to use it, and home users adopted it only when no other option was available.

Switch to Windows 7 Should Be Smoother

Well, Microsoft was listening and the company promises that the migration to Windows 7 will be much smoother than the switch to Vista was, starting with the hardware drivers. Microsoft is requiring all vendors that use the “Vista Certified” logo to verify that their drivers will also work with Windows 7. There’s no requirement right now that existing drivers work with Windows 7, but manufacturers have only until October 22 to bring their drivers up to snuff, lest they risk losing the Vista Certified label.

Microsoft isn’t willing to tolerate what it believes was the major cause of rejection among potential Vista users when it comes to Windows 7. The company won’t put up with two quick losses, so device drivers are receiving special attention from Redmond.

Among the most important drivers will be the graphics and printer drivers. With graphics drivers, users have the fallback of using generic video drivers to get their displays to work. At one level, that’s good, but it’s not a solution for the long-term. Users don’t have the luxury of relying on a whole stable of generic printer drivers. Printers, especially older ones, will need to receive a little extra attention from their manufacturers if users want to be certain that the printer will survive the switch to Windows 7.

The newest printers report more than just the status of the print spooler. They can also report ink and toner level, remaining drum life, jams, paper outages and more. These features rely on updated drivers. While an older driver may be able to interface the printer to the computer correctly, it may mishandle the information the printer is trying to feed back to the user.

One nice touch that Microsoft has built into the Release Candidate is the ability to report potential driver problems to the company. Microsoft will then notify affected users when an updated driver is available for the user’s hardware.

Microsoft isn’t promising a seamless experience with drivers in Windows 7, but it’s clear that the company is trying to get all of its ducks in a row before the OS hits the streets in October.

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If you’re like many people, you tend to keep your personal computer equipment around for a while. Longer, at least, than most corporations do. Over time, you’ll collect hardware that you may want to migrate with you when the time comes for a new computer running Vista. You may find that your old hardware doesn’t work so well with Vista. Often, this is the result of incompatibilities between the hardware driver and an operating system that post-dates the hardware and its driver installation routine.

Can You Still Install Old Drivers?

All is not lost. In many cases, the manufacturer has written a newer, compatible driver. If that’s the case, you can download the driver, install it and be on your way. If not, you may have to do some research on your older hardware to see if someone’s written a third-party driver that will enable your old hardware to work properly with the computer.

You may also find that the driver may be OK, but the old hardware’s installer routine doesn’t run under the newer operating system. Is there even a fix for this? Possibly. You’ll need to know what OS the old installer you’re trying to run was written for. If it’s one or two revisions out, you may be in luck. You may be able to locate this information on the installer media or with the documentation that came with the hardware.

With Vista, you can try to access the old installer routine using Vista’s built in “Compatibility Mode.” Compatibility Mode enables Vista to look like older versions of the OS – which is what an old installer will be expecting. How can you access Compatibility Mode?

Locate the installer.exe file in your file system and right-click on the file. From the contextual menu, choose Properties > Compatibility. Choose the version of Windows you want to emulate and select the “Run this program in compatibility mode” checkbox. Run the installer and see if it goes. This approach won’t always work, but it’s worth a try.

If Compatibility Mode doesn’t seem to rouse the old installer, you can manually install the driver if you have the stomach for the process, which usually involves unzipping .cab files to search for the driver, and then using the Device Manager to identify and install the new (old?) driver. If that thought leaves you queasy, you can also use Driver Detective to locate and install the appropriate drivers for your hardware. Driver Detective will manage all of your drivers, locate new ones and re-install drivers that have become corrupted or have been accidentally deleted.

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