Windows 7 Device Drivers Question?

I have a small question. Are Vista compatible device drivers also compatible with Windows 7?

I have a laptop (XPS M1530) from Dell that came with Vista installed. I am wondering if upgrade to Windows 7, will my devices still work? Dell currently only has Vista compatible drivers available for my model on their drivers website and I have a feeling that they will take their sweet time in uploading Win 7 compatible drivers for my model as they will be hoping people will buy new laptops pre-installed with Win 7 from them instead.

I have never installed win 7 on my current laptop so I do not know. Has anyone tried win 7 on their computers that originally came with Vista and had any problem with their audio, video, network card etc. drivers?

This site says they should be compatible majority of the time. Is this correct?

 

Install and run this:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...FamilyID=1b544e90-7659-4bd9-9e51-2497c146af15

Generally, there are good chances that drivers for Vista will also do for 7. But that's not 100% sure.

 

all the vista drivers i tryed with 7 worked fine.
you may need to right click the installed and tick the compatibility tab and select vista.
see if your devices have 7 drivers thou and if they do use the 7 drivers.

 

I'm not trying to veer people away from this forum because Wilders is one of the best security forums on the net, but if your trying to get deep into discussion for more advanced answers to your windows 7 questions try a windows 7 forum, these guys seem to have all the answers, and are fast at answering any questions you may have concerning windows 7.....

This one is very good
http://www.sevenforums.com/

I haven't really messed with this one yet
http://windows7forums.com/

 

Thanks for the tool. I ran it and it passed all my devices as compatible with Win 7, except the video driver which needed a driver update. I am assuming the statement "this device is compatible with Windows 7" means that it is compatible running with the existing driver?

I always assumed that the above tool was to see if you met the minimum hardware requirements for an upgrade so I never paid it much attention before.

 

Thanks for this info.... Does this mean that any driver that is not working will work it I check the Vista compatibility option?

I have a software based audio driver from Creative called "Creative Audigy Advanced MB". This is not a driver but an add-on for my OEM SigmaTel audio chip and I noticed that after installing this the sound quality of the audio card is significantly enhanced. It is currently listed as not compatible with Windows 7 on other forums by users. I was wondering if it will work with the Vista compatibility option checked?

Anyway, thanks for the suggestion. I was thinking about upgrading to Windows 7 but it suddenly occurred to me what if my devices were not compatible with win 7.

I guess now I probably need to install win 7 RC or something and check before upgrading....

 

I just had a small question, but thanks for the links.....

 

Hey,
IT may well do
If you want to try windows 7 before you buy try the final 90day enterprise trial from here

 

Thanks, this is even better. I will download and try it as soon as possible.

 

I think that most probably Win7 will have ready drivers for your hardware or in the worst case, there is a Win 7 driver ready somewhere.

On my desktop, Win 7 had all my hardware drivers except for my printer and scanner. Of these 2, i use the vista drivers, as their manufacturers haven't released win 7 drivers yet. The scanner works fine, the printer does print, but windows has an exclamation mark on it claiming it's not working 100% correctly.


I would think that you won't need any drivers for your laptop. Win 7 will probably recognize it all.

 

I had a problem installing Win 7 realtek audio driver on my laptop. So I tried an older Vista version and it worked fine.

 

oh! I should have posted after trying Windows 7. I did a clean install of 32-bit Windows 7 on my Dell XPS M1530 Laptop last weekend and here is what I found.

All my devices (running with older drivers meant for 32-bit Vista only) were compatible with Windows 7. The only problem was Video card driver which needed an update from Nvidia.

There were some software compatibility issues. Make sure you have updated installers for your software which are windows 7 compatible, as windows 7 will otherwise block the software from installing. I had issues with Tuneup utilities 2009 and older CD for Norton 360 v1. Tuneup does not yet have a win 7 compatible update available but Norton 360 v3 will work fine.

My biggest problem was with creative sound blaster advanced MB. It is incompatible with windows 7 and there is no update available and most likely it will not be available. So, if like me you have an OEM audio chip which only came with drivers and no software application suite with advanced features then you are probably stuck, as my sound quality deteriorated greatly without the creative application.

I only had 24 hrs to evaluate windows 7, as I restored my Vista image back before Monday. I will restore the win 7 image again this weekend and play with it some more and let everyone know if I find any other compatibility problems.

By the way, if someone else has a Dell system and is wondering if the system is compatible with Windows 7, then here is a link I found on the Dell website (which appeared to be very carefully hidden by Dell, so that an unsuspecting customer might not accidentally find it) that lists which Dell systems are compatible with Windows 7. http://support.dell.com/support/top...n/document?c=us&cs=19&docid=360683&l=en&s=dhs