Win8 Drivers

Within a few hours of getting my new NP9150, I shrank the Windows partition, made a new one, and set off installing Win8 Release Preview. It's up & running, so now I'm working out the details, starting with drivers. I've got the graphics driver downloading. Device manager also shows "PCI Device" and "PCI Simple Communications Controller". Anyone know exactly which devices these are? Throwing the driver disk in & running automatic driver updates doesn't help, so I need to tell it specifically which drivers to use.

 

PCI Simple Communications Controller is generally the Chipset driver I believe.

The PCI Device can be a little trickier as there are a few things it can be. You can try using this link Unknow Pci device driver - Windows 7 Forums for some decoding tips on figuring that one out.

Let us know if you need any further assistance, the community is always here to help.

 

Ok, the "PCI Device" was the card reader, now to figure out the other one, which so far has not accepted chipset drivers.

*edit* the other one was "Intel Management Engine Interface"

 

Ok, having issues with the 7970m drivers for Win8. Device manager knows what it is, but it's complaining. Downloading drivers from Sager & running the install didn't change anything. It's showing the current driver version as 8.97.10.0.

A quick note, I've had no issues in Win7 (preconfigured by Sager).

 

Now that's a shocker. The 7970 barely plays nice with the current drivers and Win7. I can't imagine why it would have a problem with Win8.

 

I'm curious to know more about how it's complaining and what you're having problems with if you don't mind. I didn't buy an OS as I fully intend to run Win 8 pre-releases exclusively until Win 8 is released. I receive my P170EM on Tuesday, so any info you can provide is welcome.

 

Device manager shows

"AMD Radeon HD 7970M (Engineering Sample - WDDM V1.20)"

It has the little yellow exclamation mark beside it. When you view the properties it says:

"Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)"

Under the driver tab it shows Driver Version 8.97.10.0 I'm not sure if this is what Windows found & self-installed, or if it changed when I downloaded & ran the driver from the Sager website (Download file is "02Video_A91X0.exe")

Windows is running fine & smooth, but launching Minecraft gives me an error about the video card.

 

Did you try playing any other games on it?

 

No, but it clearly isn't working properly when the device manager says the device has been stopped. The best it's going to do is run on the integrated graphics.

 

Looks like another late OS adoption for me. Not complaining, can't say I've enjoyed a Windows install pre-SP1 for a couple iterations now.

 

It's a release preview, not even a release candidate.

 

You are very much correct. I'd really like to see what they do with it in release, but again, I probably won't be getting around to adopting for awhile. It just always seems to work out that way. I was going to do differently with this one, but the chance of not having driver support is enough for me to save the money for now/near future.

 

I understand. Although, considering 7970M barely has drivers at all, it's probably gonna change later on.

Is there actually any reason to use windows 8 if you're not gonna use the metro interface?

 

Weird. I was using (and loving) Windows 7 from beta.

I think so. There are lots of small, intuitive changes that I really like. For example, file transfers make a lot of sense now. You can actually pause and prioritize file transfers if you have several running at once. They also all show in the same window rather than several small ones. The task manager is a lot more informative and intuitive as well. Don't sell the metro interface short though either. It's actually really quite good, even with a mouse and keyboard. Do yourself a favor and give it a try.

 

I got my laptop today and seem to be having the exact same issue as you, YAYTech, so take consolation in knowing that it's not just you. I may try the new drivers to see if that resolves the issue or not.