A question about driverpacks download and soft for using it

In my opinion Mass Storage is the only driverpack worth slipstreaming because Windows XP originally doesn't support SATA natively. Also Windows XP might not boot after replacing motherboard, forcing reinstalling Windows XP if there is no way to boot the PC with the old motherboard to install drivers for the new motherboard.

Actually slipstreaming is more tricky and error prone than installing drivers on working OS because some drivers won't install properly during Windows setup and and this problem has to be solved with such workaround as the finisher. On the other hand, it isn't needed when drivers are installed on a working OS. I believe the DriverPack team does its best to make sure that everything is working and I appreciate that but it makes testing driverpacks more difficult.

You might think that installing on working Windows is less reliable because drivers are installed via DPInst which is notorious for its bugs. But it is no longer applies to DriverPack Solution as it switched to devcon(see comments for R146). SAD and Drivers Installer Assistant are still using DPInst though.

It's not that slipstreaming is all bad and it surely has its place. But I myself prefer to have more control over installing drivers and be able to roll back if something goes wrong. Also slipstreaming  makes Windows more bloated and it takes more time detect new device when I plug something in.

DriverPack Solution is still the best program(which is based on driverpacks) for installing drivers on working Windows even though its development slowed down. Drivers Installer Assistant has made some significant progress recently but still hasn't caught up with DriverPack Solution. Romeo91 is aware of all weak points of his program so he might eventually caught up.

Both programs can work with any driverpacks but you should not slipstream the driverpacks which are bundled with the programs because DriverPacks BASE might not be able to extract them(old 7-zip) and these driverpacks might not support the finisher.

Last edited by BadPointer (2010-12-10 07:47:16)

Some time ago I pointed out the drawbacks of Drivers Installer Assistant.
http://forum.oszone.net/post-1466852.html#post1466852 (Russian, you can use Google Translate)
http://samforum.ws/showpost.php?p=84072 … count=1544 (Russian)
http://samforum.ws/showpost.php?p=83546 … count=1427 (Russian)

Keep in mind that most the issues has been resolved but some still aren't resolved.

DIA still shortens HWIDs to increase chances of finding matching HWID instead of using full(uncut) HWIDs. It results in matching a lot of drivers and many of them aren't compatible. DIA doesn't determine the most compatible driver based on the list of compatible HWIDs. It still doesn't parse all the HWIDs(the compatible HWID list) supplied by a device.  It uses DPInst to install drivers(see http://code.google.com/p/driverpacksolu … ail?r=146). DPInst often doesn't install NVidia panel and refuses to install many chipset drivers and it preinstalls drivers which neither needed nor requested to install.
Romeo is going to address these issues but it will take some time.

As for alternatives. Just 3 days ago a new program: "MySetup: Driver Installer" by Sosed213 emerged which appears to leapfrog DIA and maybe even catch up with DriverPack Solution as far as the core functionality goes so I'll keep watching it. Sosed213 asked my some questions regarding installing drivers a few months ago so I knew that he was working on it but I didn't expect it to be released so soon. I still have to ask him some questions to make sure that it works just like DriverPack Solution. After evaluting "MySetup: Driver Installer" some more, I see it still needs some improvements/bugfixing to match DriverPack Solution but the core functinality appears to be in.

Last edited by BadPointer (2010-12-14 07:15:14)

With slipstreaming, I would have to update my CD/DVD quite often but it has limited rewrite cycles. Also if something goes wrong with new driverpacks, I wouldn't have a back up plan as I had have rewritten the previous known-working driverpacks.
I guess you don't get much information on how well drivers are picked by the system. The system might choose an old driver and you would assume it picked your new driver from driverpacks and it works fine.
How do you minimize these complications?

Actually I don't install Windows as often as I upgrade hardware(like GPU) and update drivers. When I update drivers, I keep the logs and analyze them when I get back to my office. I wouldn't have got that much information and experience if I was using slipstreaming.

They are quite common but some may go unnoticed. DriverPack Solution picks specific drivers and expects only them to be installed but DPInst would install drivers which aren't requested just because they are happen to be in the same folder where the requested driver is. Sometimes DPInst installs drivers but keeps the older version driver active so you have to pick them manually from the Device Manager.
DPInst doesn't use Win32API(devcon is actually a console front-end using Win32API) to install drivers and instead it is trying to do itself and it isn't reliable.

DIA can't ditch DPInst just yet because devcon(and Win32API) requires an uncut HWID as an argument while DPInst doesn't need HWID at all.

Last edited by BadPointer (2010-12-14 08:59:50)

That's not so easy.

Actually I quit DriverPacks Solution and my last revision was R145 on Feb 05, 2010.
http://code.google.com/p/driverpacksolution/source/list
I made an exception:I made R146-R149 in August but I made it that clear that I would not make new revisions unless a regression is discovered in R146-R149.

I'm still around only because I use it regularly at work and I'm interested in user feedback even though I'm most likely not going to fix or implement something in DriverPack Solution.

ArtX is the author the program and he is still working on it on his own closed SVN repository but is still hasn't applied the changes from R145-R150(it still uses DPInst). His latest release is named "DriverPack Solution 10.6 R44" and has some improvements in UI and lacks the said changes. That makes "DriverPack Solution 10 R150" appear older even though it finds and installs drivers better and it is bundled with more recent driverpacks than "DriverPack Solution 10.6 R44".

I think users are confused enough with different versions of DriverPack Solution and don't know which version to use and I don't want to make things more complicated.

One could download it via a SVN client.
http://code.google.com/p/driverpacksolu … /SVNbasics
Being able to use a SVN client was a requirement for testers and anyone who was going to make a distribution with bundled driverpacks.
This is why there was no direct link until now: http://code.google.com/p/driverpacksolu … loads/list.

Last edited by BadPointer (2010-12-14 20:28:01)