Win-98 On-line Update Device Driver Wizard

[Guest wsxedcrfv]

In device manager, when viewing the driver properties of a hardware item, if you select Update Driver, and you select "Search for a better driver than the one your device is currently using now", you will have 4 choices, one of them is Microsoft Windows Update.

If you select that option, you will either get a message along the lines of "no driver found", or you will get a window with a message saying "Downloading server information" and then a window asking this:

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Do you want to install and run "C:\Windows\TEMP\direct.b1" ?

The publisher cannot be determined due to the problems below:

The object to be verifies is unknown to the Trust Provider.

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The file is always direct.b1.

What is actually happening here? What is the file "direct.b1" ?

Most of the time, if you select "Yes", then you are told "Windows was unable to locate an updated driver for this device ..."

Does this on-line method of obtaining hardware drivers directly from Microsoft for win-98 work? Or, did it work in the past but not any more?

[Romeo29]

It never worked for me either.

[pcalvert]

I trusted Windows Update to update a driver on my mother's computer once, and it messed up her computer. It installed an incorrect driver.

Phil

[Queue]

I've had the same experience, including using Windows Update to update drivers on XP, the drivers from Windows Update never work (and usually disable the piece of hardware). If you see a driver update for a piece of hardware there and you decide you MUST update the driver, go to the hardware maker's site and get the drivers from there. The updates to Windows itself have always worked perfectly for me, however.

Queue

[BogdanV]

I wonder if you could ever change the url coded in that function to point to a comunity-made repository maybe (?)

[Sl@y3D for my n@me]

It does work, I have used it before successfully. However, barely any drivers are actually on the Windows Update site, and the ones that are have an unusual ability to break your PC. For example, some SiS drivers that could be installed with that wizard broke my drivers. My modem installed perfectly from there though.

[ShadeTreeLee]

The text is coming from the file CDM.DLL which appears to be an internet downloading widget of some sort. I would suspect that the rewrite of it would be required to change it's hook up url to a 'comunity-made repository'.

But good idea - provided the community could do a better job of it than MS did. It appears that anyone might be able to considering all the bad things I have always heard about MS drivers.

I've never attempted to use it due to all the bad comments I've come across, I'm not likely to try it now either.