Microsoft pleads with hardware vendors to pay attention to Windows 7 driver compatibility issues

At the recent WinHEC Developer Conference, Microsoft publicly requested hardware companies not to evade driver support issues, and now began Windows 7 hardware compatibility testing.

At the conference, Microsoft has confirmed that a public beta version of Windows 7 will be released in the first half of 2009. Microsoft urges hardware device manufacturers to begin hardware testing of Windows 7 now to avoid hardware compatibility issues when the public beta release next year.

Among them, the driver problem is a major problem encountered in the Microsoft Vista operating system. Jon DeVaan, vice president of Microsoft Windows core operating system, admitted that after the official release of Vista, we discovered that there are quite a lot of Problem report & rdquo;.

DeVaan insists that although 95% of PCs now have good driver support, Microsoft does not want to repeat the same mistakes when Windows 7 is released, so it is now necessary to emphasize the importance of cooperation to hardware manufacturers.

Also, Windows 7 is not a completely new operating system. In Vista, Microsoft changed a lot of driver models and low-level system settings, while Windows 7 did not. DeVaan said, "If the device can run on Vista, then it should run no problem with Windows 7."

In fact, Windows 7 only enhances the driver installation mode and simplifies the installation process. Many of the features are implemented via XML. In theory, hardware vendors can take advantage of existing Vista drivers instead of rewriting all the code.

Although Microsoft has not officially announced the release date of Windows 7, according to rumors, Microsoft is still keen to complete it in 2009. In addition, Microsoft said to developers that "When Windows 7 is released, WinHEC will not be held again", which also indicates that the official listing date of Windows 7 is likely to be in 2009.