Device Drivers - The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Pathetic

I just had to set up my daughter's new computer and adding non-standard devices is still very very painful. Here is what I hit.

The good - Canon. Go to their website, find it in 4 clicks, and they have an ActiveX control that you click on and it installs it. This is the way it should work.

The bad - Brother. The device (MFC-4000ML) is not listed in their driver download page. Is disk space so expensive to them that there is no room for older drivers? And to ask them where the driver is, you have to register, create a username & password, enter your address - which they check so you can't just put "a" for each item (I entered G.W. Bush at the White House). Are they planning on visiting me?

The ugly - Epson. I installed the driver for their Perfection 610 and then the computer would not boot. One of it's drivers does something during the boot process that locks up the system. I had to safe boot, delete the driver, then roll back the system. And this is a brand new Dell computer with no extra software on it - so it can't be some weird configuration. Never buy Epson again.

The pathetic - 3COM. I tried to install their driver.

• During the install it says it needs the Microsoft java VM installed (it was).
• It then tells you to go to a url to get the needed software. It's a network card, I'm installing from a CD because until the driver is working, I can't go to a url.
• Try the url from my system - it doesn't exist.
• Finally got the driver installing and at the end says "There was a problem installing this driver." Wow, that's informative.

And why is it that aside from Canon none of the drivers are certified by Microsoft and none of the install programs are authenticode signed? It's like these companies are all stuck back in 1990. I definitely would never use any of them for a business purchase - which may help explain why Cisco has kicked 3COM's butt.

Also, don't ask people to register to get a question asked. There is no way I am keeping login information when I will probably never need it again (definitely won't in the case of Epson). Make it an option. Dell, Microsoft, & Sun I want a login at - I'm in there a lot. Other places, not until I'm back for the 5th time or so.

Help!

If anyone knows how to totally remove an Epson driver, please let me know. It's still partially on the system and when I try to remove it Windows refuses saying the driver is marked as required to boot. (Gee, who knew a scanner was so integral to Windows...)

Do you find this useful? If so please check out Windward Reports.

Comments

[cindy meister]

For this one
<<9. Cannot set Outlook/Exchange to allow any attachment. There are times I ask someone to email me an exe - but there is no way to allow that.>>

Ken Slovak knows how to create a Registry entry for this. I think you can find the info on slipstick.com, but if not, just ask in an Outlook newsgroup on microsoft.com. All the MVPs should know :-)