"Safe" sources for antiquated drivers

britechguy said:
@Sky-Knight: You live in a fantasy world, plain and simple. And your assessments have zero connection to reality. I'm the only one who seems to be willing to waste my breath pushing back at your inane assertions and your attempts to make your idea of the perfect be what overrides the perfectly fine, thanks.
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You're a desperately needed set of regulations away from being out of business. I won't not point that out. Failing to do so is unethical.
 
Sky-Knight said:
You're a desperately needed set of regulations away from being out of business. I won't not point that out. Failing to do so is unethical.
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Do such exist? No.

Will such be forthcoming? Almost certainly not.

Do people have older equipment that works fine and which they wish to continue using? Yes.

Does doing so generally pose any real risk? No.

More than enough said.
 
@Sky-Knight there are instances where customers refuse to update/upgrade or compatibility with something can be broken and require a much larger investment in time and resources for us and/or the business than any supposed risk may be worth. There are ways to vet and secure the resources needed to operate some antiquated hardware that my be functionally required for the business to operate without a major overhaul. It is in our interest to ensure clarity of potential risk and that the option to fix in this manner may eventually cease to be an option and the major overhaul needs to be looked at and likely planned for a future date. There is no clear indication that @britechguy has not or would not do such for any of his clients.

I remember supporting a doctors office around the introduction to the electronic medical records requirement however they opted to take the fine and penalties instead of the overhaul needed to meet those requirements. The choice also lead to continuing to need to maintain older hardware and existing software which did not work on modern hardware. They had to run select pieces in VMs running Windows XP as anything newer was not compatible. The VMs were secured and isolated as best as can be done without breaking functionality and on a limited budget as it was a small independent medical practice. I rarely talk about this client in the past as I avoided any talk or mention of anything that has to comply with security and privacy guidelines line HIPAA but this client and practice has closed as the doctor has since retired. Which I believe the retirement was planned and part of the resistance to the changes as it was not going to be worth the investment to operate for a few years.

I do see both the points your making but there seems to be a hard line @Sky-Knight you may be drawing that for myself and @britechguy we have found we can't be so hardlined with our clients and customers. There is a point at which some customers you can draw a hardline for and others you can't.
 
@Blues The line is created due to the legal liabilities that are coming down the pipeline and already exist. MSPs and other technical partners are being sued out of existence in the US market because of this.

That being said, if you're doing the diligence to document the process, and educating the customer on the risks involved, and the customer has accepted that risk in writing... You're fine.

The problem only lies in supporting situations like this without the paper trail, if you do that... bad things will be happening. I realize they haven't happened yet for a great many, but that's changing rapidly. So if you want to use stuff that's got any more risk than bone stock OEM... document it please. I don't want to come in here and read about legal issues, I face those enough at work.

If you have a residential customer show up, drop off a laptop for a reload, and you install some odd driver that winds up in an investigation of their ID theft later... Historically this wasn't an issue, it IS an issue now. And it's more of an issue every day forward we take because insurance providers are not willing to foot the bill.

So if anyone reads anything about hard lines, YES I have them! I have them because I don't have contracts to defray the risk to my customers. And if anyone else is in the same situation, make sure you have a mitigation strategy in place. Because again, I do not want to read about that. It means ugly things are happening at home somewhere, and that crap hurts.

Do not let a client force you to put yourself at risk... that's what I'm really asking.
 
I have 2 "go to"s for older drivers and have not had an issue with either one yet. One is Driver Pack Solutions [originally via download, now online] and the other is DriversCollection.com.

DriversCollection.com

Driverscollection.com - One of largest free net library of device drivers for computer hardware. 6'411'278 (401.99 TB) drivers available for free download.
us.driverscollection.com us.driverscollection.com

Drivers Collection goes up to Windows 8.1 but there are times when I've had to use a driver compatible with the original Windows o/s that came with the computer to get to the next level driver. It's strange but, sometimes you have to install the driver before the one you want to install, in order to get the one you want. I've had that happen a few times.

Anyone else use either of these?
 
fincoder said:
I believe this is the source of drivers installed by Snappy Driver Installer Origin.
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It's a team of software developers who offer this for free due to paid sponshorship via Opera, Chrone, Firefox, and now something 360. It actually works very well, when I've got issues with a computer that I feel needs drivers. I just uninstall the added software. That's as much as I know. I have no clue to its origins.
 
ThatPlace928 said:
Doesn't bother me.
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This comes down to "Different strokes for different folks?" Some of the things I read here have me scratching my head and saying (silently, to myself): Why in the hell would any sane person do that?

I am quite certain that things I've posted have elicited the same response in others (sometimes not silent, and that's OK).

There is no right or wrong way provided the outcome that's being sought is achieved. It's whatever method suits you best and you're most comfortable with that's the one you should use.
 
britechguy said:
There is no right or wrong way provided the outcome that's being sought is achieved. It's whatever method suits you best and you're most comfortable with that's the one you should use.
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I totally agree. I use a lot of old school methods to accomplish simple tasks but there are others who write complicated scripts to get to the same point. It's all about what works best for each of us.
 
I had a quick look at that Driver Pack Solutions mentioned above, and it looks terribly over-simplified for ordinary end users. I couldn't get it to show a list of driver updates recommended or anything like that, just the option to update all drivers or choose from a short high-level list of problems to solve (e.g. no internet).

@ThatPlace928 if you're happy to trust the drivers in Driverpacks, you'd be far better off using SDIO. It's far more flexible and powerful. It's designed for techs, and maintained by the technibble member @glennd
 
fincoder said:
I had a quick look at that Driver Pack Solutions mentioned above, and it looks terribly over-simplified for ordinary end users. I couldn't get it to show a list of driver updates recommended or anything like that, just the option to update all drivers or choose from a short high-level list of problems to solve (e.g. no internet).
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They've changed the way it downloads, only recently. I used to have it on a stick and could use it anywhere at any time and the list of drivers to choose from was an option.

Now it's a download with a simple command to go online, detect, and install. This new way doesn't give you a list of outdated or missing drivers to choose from, which I'd much rather have the list. It IS very simple to use and has been an effective way to get the drivers I needed, wifi being one of the ones that fails the most. Generally, I tether my phone [or use my unlimited hot spot] and connect that way, when I can't get a network connection. After I run Driver Pack, everything works and I disconnect my phone.

I may try the one you suggest, at some point in the near future. If I feel it does a better job, I can choose to make the switch.
 
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