Be VERY Careful!

**Tekboy** · June 11th, 2006, 04:28 PM

I installed Windows Vista Beta 2 Yesterday, and it does look nice. On the other hand, it seems to have tried to update the Firmware on my SoundBlaster Live 24 Bit sound card, and now it is undetectable by my machine.

It is definitely not ready for public consumption!

Just for clarification, I unplugged my XP Drive, and installed on a raw 160gb drive. And now that I have unplugged the Vista drive and plugged my XP drive back in, after carefully checking that everything is tight and cozy, there is no device detected. Vista killed it!

**Ferrit** · June 11th, 2006, 07:58 PM

Vista downloaded and installed a firmware that killed a physical device like a sound card?
Is that what you are saying?

**street1** · June 11th, 2006, 08:38 PM

Vista killed a XP Drive?Looks like Uncle Billy got that one fine tuned.

So Vista installs it's spirit into the BIOS and..............Bella Vista and
Microsoft plays 'Viva Pinata'

Just joking of course.Something must have went wrong in the BIOS settings

or your hard drive with XP picked a fine time.

**Tekboy** · June 11th, 2006, 11:52 PM

Originally Posted by Ferrit

Vista downloaded and installed a firmware that killed a physical device like a sound card?
Is that what you are saying?

I suppose there is room for another explanation, but it is the only one I can come up with to satifactorily explain what happened. Sound card is toast, and my computer stopped detecting it after Vista tried to install the software.

It worked fine until then, and the only thing different is that I unhooked the XP drive before installing Vista, and I unhooked the Vista drive to get back to XP, since I only have one SATA cable. This drive doesn't know anything about the Vista drive.

**gemstone** · June 12th, 2006, 01:39 AM

If that is the case, about firmware updating then you have a claim against MS since they have modified hardware without consent which despite anyone's misgivings about them is a highly unlikely thing for them to do.
Have you tried removing the card, rebooting and remove all vestiges of drivers, files and reg entries then reboot again after turning off and reseating the card letting it be discovered again by the system?

**sentry** · June 12th, 2006, 02:29 AM

Im sure MS could have destroyed all of his hardware and gotten away with it simply because of the word "beta". Not to mention theres no telling what we agree to when we accept the license. Who reads that stuff anyways!

**3fingersalute** · June 12th, 2006, 06:15 AM

Originally Posted by gemstone

If that is the case, about firmware updating then you have a claim against MS since they have modified hardware without consent which despite anyone's misgivings about them is a highly unlikely thing for them to do.
Have you tried removing the card, rebooting and remove all vestiges of drivers, files and reg entries then reboot again after turning off and reseating the card letting it be discovered again by the system?

But regardless, if it was working on the XP drive when he unhooked it, it should work again when he reconnects it, as long as no other hardware changes had been made other than simply running an alternative OS on a different hard drive.

**Ferrit** · June 12th, 2006, 09:30 AM

I would try it in another system before doing anything at all.
I frankly find it highly unlikely that vista would do a firmware update and kill the card.
Possible YES likely NO
Imagine the sendoff for Vista if that were true

**Tekboy** · June 12th, 2006, 12:14 PM

Originally Posted by Ferrit

I would try it in another system before doing anything at all.
I frankly find it highly unlikely that vista would do a firmware update and kill the card.
Possible YES likely NO
Imagine the sendoff for Vista if that were true

You guys can believe what you want, and BETA means I agreed to let M$ trash my hardware with no liability.

Three Finger is right. That is my experience as a technician.

Fortunately, the card was relatively inexpensive. But if you guys believe in the awesome benevolence of The Microsoft Corporation, we have nothing further to discuss.

**BOB IROC** · June 12th, 2006, 02:57 PM

Vista will not upgrade firmware on any device. It may have its own built in drivers for devices, but it DID not upgrade the firmware on your soundcard. Firmware is gotten from the device manufacturer.

I have installed Vista on 5 different computers using both the 32bit and 64bit versions and it all installed and ran fine. I had to get some vista beta drivers from the device manufacturers, but it found most of them by itself.

I love your comment: "It is definitely not ready for public consumption!"

Yeah, that's why they call it beta.

There is no reason to bash or blame microsoft for a problem that is obviously not theirs. Did you even install the Vista drivers from Creative? I think they have some. And if Creative's drivers are crap it is not MS's fault.

If you are not willing to deal with a few bumps in the road then you should not download or use beta software. The fact that you blame Microsoft for purposely destroying your hardware makes me question your credibility as a tech.

**Ferrit** · June 12th, 2006, 04:20 PM

Originally Posted by Tekboy

You guys can believe what you want, and BETA means I agreed to let M$ trash my hardware with no liability.

Three Finger is right. That is my experience as a technician.

Fortunately, the card was relatively inexpensive. But if you guys believe in the awesome benevolence of The Microsoft Corporation, we have nothing further to discuss.

Ok fine then I will tell it like it is
Saying vista downloaded a firmware and trashed yer sound card is total bs.
You may believe thats true but i dont think so,and it has nothing to do with believing in MS's benevolence.
I would be more highly inclined to think yer crappy POS creative product chose that time to die.
If you want to talk about jack *** companies start with the king of kings in that dept.
CREATIVE

**street1** · June 12th, 2006, 05:09 PM

Tekboy is a nice fella.Aren't we all getting a little too brassy?

Sorry if my comment was too brassy Tekboy.

I see the point you were trying to make.I too am weary of new
Operating Systems.

I do believe your sound card going bad at the same time was a fluke
or you have a bad PCI slot or BIOS issue.Don't really know for sure.

I just think the hardware issue is a fluke.

**BOB IROC** · June 12th, 2006, 05:31 PM

Sorry if my comments sounded "Brassy" Too, but it gets very frustrating when people take a piece of beta software and install it and then whine and complain when everything is not perfect. Then on top of it they make up things that are not true like Windows automatically updated the firmware on my soundcard.

I mean c'mon this was just released as a public beta last week and people expect it to run like it was the final product. Vista is not going to be released for 6 - 8 months which is plenty of time to take feeback from beta users and make changes. If this was RC1 of Vista then it may be a little more understandable, but it is not. Like I said before, if are not willing to take a few bumps in the road the DO NOT download, install or use beta software. But by all means do not pull things out of thin air just to point the finger at someone else. I am sure it is purely coincidence that the soundcard failed at this point or it could just be some settings or a driver issue.

**dglienna** · June 12th, 2006, 09:58 PM

I installed it on a new 20g drive. I have yet to find sound drivers (soundcard or modem) or network device (other than the WIFI). Kind of odd.

When I used it the first time, I signed into MSN (instead of using Trillian under XP) Everything worked, but when I swapped drives, I had to add all contacts to trillian again. Also, the clock jumped an hour somehow in the mix.

I joined this site in hopes of finding drivers, but so far, nothing has worked.
I've even seen links posted elsewhere to the files that I tried.. Zilch!

**houseisland** · June 12th, 2006, 10:23 PM

So far I like Vista. It looks nice. It has a lot of very nice features. Too much in the way of security features to go into here -- if MS pull this one off, it will be a great OS.

I am not too crazy about its user surveillance capabilities. Big Brother is watching you.

It runs a little slowly on my Athlon XP 2500+ with 1 Gb RAM.

Best on 3GHz+ multicore processor with 2+ Gbs of RAM and a fast SATA hard drive.

As for drivers, I have no sound card, scanner, inkjet printer, or TV/Vid capture card. Spotty driver support was entirely expected, though.