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Had a buddy of mine bring me an almost 10 year old laptop this weekend, that had come with Windows 7, but had been upgraded to 10 back when MS was pushing hard to get people to upgrade. The laptop can do 1600x900, but ever since the 1709 upgrade, his resolution dropped to 1024x768. The only available options in the resolution dropdown were 800x600, 1024x768, and 1152x864.
No amount of fiddling with the video driver, including fully uninstalling and reinstalling it, solved anything. Then I realized something I've never seen before: Device Manager correctly identified the video chipset as a Radeon 3200 HD, but the now-Metrofied (my word) Settings page, where the user gets to choose his resolution, simply reported back "Microsoft Basic Video Display"...or whatever the lowest common denominator is called...as if there was a disconnect between the two. Device Manager reported one thing, but that wasn't brought forward in the resolution selection dialog.
System Restore worked, according to the laptop's owner (restoring to a point in time before installing 1709)--that is, the correct resolution was selected and everything was back to normal...although I didn't see myself while it was back in this state to confirm whether the Metrofied Settings page was then showing the correct chipset name rather than the basic driver. However, as soon as 1709 reinstalled itself a few days later, the problem came back.
As I said, the machine is very old, so it wouldn't surprise me if MS removed support for this particular chipset starting with 1709, and maybe it couldn't figure out what to do with the driver that was already installed/reported back by Device Manager...but that was a rather strange state.
Anyway, long story short: The guy already hated Windows 10, so I suggested to simply reinstall that. A clean install, and at least 12 reboots later (until Windows Update came with nothing else to offer), he was back in business... Bonus: Apparently his hard drive died a few years ago and he had it replaced with an SSD, so even though the machine's quite old, it's still quite fast (especially with a fresh Win7 install).
My point? I had initially set out to describe what a full Windows 7 re-installation process looks like nowadays, but this is already getting way too long, so that'll have to be a story for another day/thread. Suffice it to say that I'm still scratching my head over this disconnect between Device Manager and the Metrofied resolution picker. I dread the day where everything in Control Panel has been "redone". I suspect it'll never happen.
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Microsoft is not alone in lack of support for older hardware. Back in the days of XP I bought a HP scanner that worked great up to the point where I upgraded to Windows 7. The driver was not compatible with 7. I thought: No problem, get a new driver from HP. But HP tech support told me they no longer supported that scanner. It was barely 5 years old. HP's advice: Buy a new scanner!
I took their advice. I bought a Canon scanner and took a solemn oath never to buy HP again. 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
modified 11-Dec-17 19:52pm.
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The problem here is that Windows 10 worked fine with that video chipset since the laptop was upgraded from 7 to 10. It's only when 1709 came out that it stopped working. I have no idea whether MS is in the habit of removing older hardware support from updates. Upgrading from 7 to 8 to 8.1 to 10...I can see that happening...but updates to the same OS?
In the past, you could decide to skip an entire generation of Windows until you had tested it sufficiently to determine whether your hardware/software was compatible with it. This new development seems to indicate you can no longer expect compatibility between updates to Windows. That's rather disturbing.
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dandy72 wrote: I have no idea whether MS is in the habit of removing older hardware support from updates.
Microsoft clearly states that hardware vendors can choose to stop supporting any hardware whenever they want. It sounds like Microsoft has simply chosen to stop supporting your friend's hardware with the latest update.
dandy72 wrote: This new development seems to indicate you can no longer expect compatibility between updates to Windows. That's rather disturbing.
Get used to it. And prepare yourself for when your hardware unexpectedly becomes unsupported. Your friend is only the canary -- this is the shape of MS computing for the foreseeable future.
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There used to be a time when you could almost be certain a driver for a version of Windows was still going to work with the next one up, provided that MS didn't change the driver model between those versions. This is why a lot of Windows 7 (or even Vista) drivers still work fine today with Windows 10. Not so, say, when we made the jump from XP to Vista.
If that's the way forward, MS will have to clarify their stance if this is indeed the "last" version of Windows, as they've stated in the past, and they're simply going to keep building on top of what exists right now (as opposed to redoing huge parts of the OS with multi-year gaps between releases).
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Are you quite sure that they did NOT change the driver model?
What is likely is that the model was significantly changed from Windows 7 to Windows 10 (yes, it was), but in a transition phase, Windows 10 had some emulation of the Windows 7 model to give hardware vendors some time to come up with a true Windows 10 driver.
A transition period does not last forever. You can't expect a Windows 7 driver to work in Windows 10, 11, 12 and 13. Now that Microsoft has decided not to call future versions 11, 12 and 13, but Windows 10 updates, the situation is nevertheless the same: You cannot expect Windows 7 drivers to work forever.
Microsoft develops some drivers, but the majority are developed and maintained by hardware manufacturers. If the hardware vendor never made a Windows 10 driver, your friend is out of luck. Some vendors do provide driver updates that are not distributed through Microsoft update, but you have to download from the vendor site. You might find it, even if it wasn't installed with Windows update.
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Member 7989122 wrote: Are you quite sure that they did NOT change the driver model?
Microsoft is generally pretty vocal about making these sorts of breaking changes, especially something that would break a lot of software/hardware and could result in a lot of unhappy OEMs (not to mention anything about consumers). Have you heard anything about breaking changes to the driver model in Windows 10? I know I haven't, and I try to stay on top of these sorts of announcements from MS.
Also: I can honestly say that 99% of all drivers designed for Windows 7 that I have had to manually try to install on newer versions still work. Of course things can change over time so there's never any guarantee, but I wouldn't describe the current situation in an apocalyptic manner.
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Software isn't far behind.... Adobe lost me forever as a paying customer with Creative Suite 2 Premium (released in 2005). Microsoft releases Vista in '06. Half of CS2 doesnt work, Adobe will not patch as they are releasing CS3 in '07, and told me no upgrade path would be available and to pay for a full new version
Director of Transmogrification Services
Shinobi of Query Language
Master of Yoda Conditional
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Cornelius Henning wrote: I took their advice. I bought a Canon scanner and took a solemn oath never to buy HP again.
[Soapbox Mode ON]
I don't think it's limited to HP, honestly. They are all planning obsolescence into their products (this is nothing new and it's not just the computer industry). I have a nice little Canon photo printer which is really simple but isn't supported by any Windows > 7. That's OK, I went on to eBay and bought a 2nd one (that was still new in the box) which sits waiting for the first one to die and I've stopped upgrading my network past Windows 7. Enough of this crap.
I don't have a problem "upgrading" a piece of equipment if it actually breaks or something (or there's a feature of the new one I just HAVE to have) but this upgrading every 2 or 3 years just to upgrade is nonsense. I got better things to do than constantly re configuring my network just so it can have the "latest and greatest" when everything works perfectly as-is.
[Soapbox Mode OFF]
-CM
If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur! - Red Adair
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When in doubt, I always go for Windows 10 God Mode[^]. While MS keeps hiding more of the control panel from the average user, this shortcut to all of the now-hidden treasures remains.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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Interesting! Thanks! 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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As far as I've ever been able to tell, the so-called God Mode list simply flattens the hierarchy of shortcuts you can get to through Control Panel and other applets. I'm not aware of any option in there that's not still exposed elsewhere. Do you know of any specific example?
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For me and my transition from 7 to 10, the benefit has been that since I cannot always remember where they put all the various settings (I can't find the Control Panel shortcut sometimes), it was better just to have the God Mode shortcut right there on the Desktop. Not that it's better, it's a little more convenient for me at least.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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Fair point. I despise the fact that I'm wasting so much time still trying to find out where they've moved something I had memorized. And you're right about using the Find function - sometimes it'll manage to find Control Panel just by typing in "control" from the Start menu, at other times it'll return empty and offer to search the web instead. Like...wow.
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Yep. A buddy of mine brought his (Only 5 years old! he said) hp dv7 laptop in with the screen doing nothing but strobing black to bright blue to black to bright blue. I looked on hps site and saw that they offer no display driver for anything later than windows 7 x64 for this laptop and neither does intel. So we removed the drivers causing windows 10 1709 to revert to Basic Windows Display driver, which for all intent and purposes looked good at 1300 x 900. Off he went happy.
I expect to see more of this in the near future.
This is no doubt an attempt to bolster new pc sales which are flat out on the mat these days.
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Quote: This is no doubt an attempt to bolster new pc sales
And most probably also an attempt to lower costs incurred to support their own products. But in doing so, they are losing what could have been loyal long term customers.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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If that's their approach, I suspect a lot of people will simply revert back to an older OS, if that's an option to them, and keep using it until the hardware dies. Then they'll purchase something that was sold with Windows 10 already on it (so it damned well better be compatible).
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dandy72 wrote: Then they'll purchase something that was sold with Windows 10 already on it (so it damned well better be compatible)
It'll be compatible, but for how long? My Lenovo laptop was abandoned by the manufacture when windows 8.1 came out -- I bought it new the year before, when 8.0 and the laptop model were both brand spanking new. They decided it was too much trouble to write 8.1 drivers for it, so abandoned it. Make no assumptions about longevity of hardware and OS compatibility.
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Wow.
Luckily (?) I hardly ever buy laptops. I still buy/build my own PCs (of desktop variety) from parts, which tend to have more mainstream drivers than OEMs, who generally have their own and who have no incentive to keep supporting them across multiple OS versions.
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Years ago, I had an even worse case:
This was before S/PDIF inputs on the mainboard was common, so I had an external box for S/PDIF-to-USB conversion. After a couple years, the vendor announced that they would be closing down hardware development to become a specialist in writing drivers for other harware manunfacturers.
So they became driver specialists - abandoning their own hardware. They stopped maintaining the drivers for it. Thiw was when XP came onto the scene, and they wrote lots of XP drivers for others, but not for their own, like the box with their label on that I was using. When I switched to XP, I had to find another way to input S/PDIF signals.
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The problem seems to be augmented by the fact it is a ATI/AMD Graphics card. Recently tried to recycle a old laptop with a X1200 and same resolution...
- Win 10 had the same issues as yours.
- No Linux distibution I tried picked it up correctly.
- End up with win 7 and a day updating.
Paulo Gomes
Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
—Bill Gates
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
—Albert Einstein
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Personally, I've abandoned ATI years ago. Which means nowadays I'll go out of my way to avoid anything from AMD. To me, their drivers and associated bloatware has been their downfall.
Nvidia isn't doing much better with their 300+MB driver downloads, but at least you can be a little more selective about what you install. Although AMD might have remedied the situation in the last few years--I don't know and frankly I don't care enough about them to find out.
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I had the same problem with a desktop PC last Sunday.
The PC was already equipped with a working W10 installation, just after the install of the "fall creators update" the video resolution dropped from 1600*900 to 1024*768.
Solution was:
- uninstalling the video card from the device manager (marking the "delete software driver" option)
- download and reinstall the official sw from the video card manufacturer's site
Same problem occurred on my personal home PC, after the "falling" update, my Sound Blaster audio card stopped working 
I suppose the new W10 update is messing around with drivers in general..
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My Windows 10 PC, happily running at 1920 x 1080, suddenly went blank, then came back at 1024 x 768 recently, also with a Radeon card. Device Manager claimed the driver was the latest available, but the date gave away what had happened. Probing about in the device manager page, I found it allowed me to revert to the previous driver and even allowed me to say why. It lasted until The addition of a second monitor a couple of weeks later prompted an upgrade, but the 7 year old Radeon was coping fine otherwise, after the driver "downgrade".
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I went though those motions. Deleted from Device Manager, downloaded and installed the latest from the manufacturer's own site--the last update to it was in 2009 (!)...Even though the driver installer didn't report any failure, and it was identified again in Device Manager using the correct name, the resolution selection screen still identified it as Basic Display.
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