# Windows 7 RC: Hardware and Device Issues



## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

This thread will be for issues involving the installation of your devices such as printers, scanners, cameras. etc., and issues with hardware such as video card, network cards and so on.

Larry


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## brant (Jul 6, 2008)

sound blaster live 5.1 is not working with windows 7. 

i'm currently downloading drivers from creative; we'll see what happens.


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

Creative has had a checkered past with drivers ever since Vista came out... not sure what their issues are. You might try installing the latest Vista driver for your card.

Larry



brant said:


> sound blaster live 5.1 is not working with windows 7.
> 
> i'm currently downloading drivers from creative; we'll see what happens.


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## brant (Jul 6, 2008)

initially, the drivers would not install because the installer could not find my card. some type of windows pop-up came on screen and asked if i wanted to try again; i hit okay. 


its working, but only two-channel audio output. the software from creative that is used to control the digital audio output will not run on windows 7; it says win7 is an unsupported operating system.


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## Smthkd (Sep 1, 2004)

I can't get Directv2PC to work with W7RC!


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

We are covering this in the Windows 7 *Software issues* thread... http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=157412

And I will bet you have an nVidia video card?

Larry



Smthkd said:


> I can't get Directv2PC to work with W7RC!


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## HDJulie (Aug 10, 2008)

Has anyone gotten a U3 device to work? When I plug mine in I get a message that the drive letter assigned is the same as a network drive & to disconnect the network drive & it won't let me run the launchpad program. I don't have any network drives mapped & I even tried changing the drive letter but no luck.


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

Do you have any other external drives connected to your PC? Don't forget external/PC card/audio hub, etc., ? If so, disconnect them all and then go in and change the drive letter. It should work after that.

Larry



HDJulie said:


> Has anyone gotten a U3 device to work? When I plug mine in I get a message that the drive letter assigned is the same as a network drive & to disconnect the network drive & it won't let me run the launchpad program. I don't have any network drives mapped & I even tried changing the drive letter but no luck.


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## HDJulie (Aug 10, 2008)

LarryFlowers said:


> Do you have any other external drives connected to your PC? Don't forget external/PC card/audio hub, etc., ? If so, disconnect them all and then go in and change the drive letter. It should work after that.
> 
> Larry


I unplugged everything, connected the U3 drive, it used the same drive letters but did let me start it up. I then changed the drive letter on the second drive that I had not been able to do before since I could not enter a password. I ejected the drive, plugged everything back in, inserted the drive & no-go. I unplugged only my hub which has an externa; drive plugged into it & then could start the drive again. I cannot start it if the hub/external drive is plugged in.


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## naijai (Aug 19, 2006)

The joys of beta testing 
Ok after swapping components on my 2 desktops i have the RC up and running on my desktop but now my printer "HP P1005"which worked fine with the native windows drivers on the beta doesn't seem to want to install on the RC even after downloading its own driver and tried to install it that way and with vista compatibility & run as administrator also,
It shows up in the device and printer screen as an unknown device with the printer model listed but doesn't recognise the drivers im using. anyone shed additional light on what i'm doing wrong


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## smiddy (Apr 5, 2006)

My Canon LiDE 25 and Canon Pixma Pro9500 both had no issues. Though the Scanner is using 32 bit software, it works so I can't complain.


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## smiddy (Apr 5, 2006)

Scatch that, th eprinter owrks as advertised on the machine it is attached, the Windows 7 64 version. However, when I try to connect other machines, I don't have the 32 bit version of the driver installed on the Windows 7 machine. Canon screams when I try to install 32 bit version so, what are my options here? :shrug:


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## brant (Jul 6, 2008)

-- n/m --


i reset all my connecters and restarted a couple of times and it appears to be working correctly now . . .


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## smiddy (Apr 5, 2006)

Ok, I resolved the issue with the printer driver, Canon has made a couple of 32 bit drivers, one works with the 64 bit additional drivers, the other doesn't. I have got both 64 bit and 32 bit loaded. There's another option for Itanium too. Is there an operating system specifically for Itanium platform (Windows?)? Any how if you get stuck with you printer drivers I can walk people through this now, sigh!


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## Fluthy (Feb 9, 2008)

I have been running Windows 7 now for a couples weeks. I am loving some of the new features, but have been having some annoying issues.

1) BSOD - I believe I have corrected this issue. I had an external HD connected via firewire and was getting a power state failure when my PC went into sleep mode. Since I have removed this HD I have not had the BSOD for 3 days now.

2) Windows Explorer has hung on average 1 to 2 times a day, currently have not determine a reason or solution for this. Anyone else having this problem?

3) I have a 1 TB SimpleTech External HD connect via USB. I have been having major problems with this HD, while previously when running Vista I had no problems with it. Many times I it is either not recognized when restarting or seem to want to fix disk errors. I have also noticed that when moving large amounts of data to this drive it has hung and had problems. Lastly when playing video stored on HD thru MCE Xbox 360 it is jittery (hardwired, had no problems when Vista). All video is converted to MPEG 2, so no transcoding should be necessary.

Anyway, thought I would see if anyone else had these problems and was able to find a solutions. Thanks in advance!


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## BubblePuppy (Nov 3, 2006)

NickFluth said:


> I have been running Windows 7 now for a couples weeks. I am loving some of the new features, but have been having some annoying issues.
> 
> 1) BSOD - I believe I have corrected this issue. I had an external HD connected via firewire and was getting a power state failure when my PC went into sleep mode. Since I have removed this HD I have not had the BSOD for 3 days now.
> 
> ...


FYIW: Explorer hangs up on my Vista machine, also.

I just installed W7 on my other laptop but haven't really played with it much as I'm still installing programs.


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

Are you talking Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer?



BubblePuppy said:


> FYIW: Explorer hangs up on my Vista machine, also.
> 
> I just installed W7 on my other laptop but haven't really played with it much as I'm still installing programs.


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## Fluthy (Feb 9, 2008)

Windows Explorer. Never had any issues with Vista's Windows Explorer.


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

I have had a few issues with IE8 (but it is still beta IE8 as the final version is not available for Windows 7 as it is for XP and Vista) but I have experienced no issues with Windows Explorer. I have 4 internal drives and 2 externals. No issues observed so far.

Can you post what you are doing the next time it happens?

Larry



NickFluth said:


> Windows Explorer. Never had any issues with Vista's Windows Explorer.


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## Fluthy (Feb 9, 2008)

I have a feeling that a large majority of the issue are with my 1TB SimpleTech external HD. For example, just this afternoon I attempted copying just small files over to the harddrive (< 1MB) and the process hung. Suddenly nothing else is responsive and it was me to restart Windows Explorer. Example below.

"
Description
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.
Faulting Application Path:	C:\Windows\explorer.exe

Problem signature
Problem Event Name:	AppHangB1
Application Name:	explorer.exe
Application Version:	6.1.7100.0
Application Timestamp:	49ee974f
Hang Signature:	9fcb
Hang Type:	0
OS Version:	6.1.7100.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID:	1033
Additional Hang Signature 1:	9fcb665cae8fee69e4dfe7b8b08472fa
Additional Hang Signature 2:	e815
Additional Hang Signature 3:	e815c6ade074730fcf40cdefb25faab7
Additional Hang Signature 4:	9fcb
Additional Hang Signature 5:	9fcb665cae8fee69e4dfe7b8b08472fa
Additional Hang Signature 6:	e815
Additional Hang Signature 7:	e815c6ade074730fcf40cdefb25faab7

Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID:	580900253
"

It's really becoming frustrating, I love the new feature of Windows 7 and it is faster than my previous Vista OS, but these critical errors that are happening multiple times a day are getting on my nerves. My PC was new in January of this year 2.5 GHz Dual-Core, 4GB RAM, 64-bit OS. I would think it's plenty powerful, has to be an issue with something that I have installed or running possible.


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

Just a thought here... go to the Control Panel and open the Device Manager... check to see if anything in the list shows an error or a problem indicator.



NickFluth said:


> I have a feeling that a large majority of the issue are with my 1TB SimpleTech external HD. For example, just this afternoon I attempted copying just small files over to the harddrive (< 1MB) and the process hung. Suddenly nothing else is responsive and it was me to restart Windows Explorer.


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## Hansen (Jan 1, 2006)

Every once in a while I will get a dialogue box that says something about Windows Explorer encountered a problem and is restarting. It eratarts and away I go. It tends to happen while using IE. Using a simple but older laptop.


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## tcusta00 (Dec 31, 2007)

*Lexar Professional UDMA CompactFlash SD Reader (USB 2.0) *

Tried on both x64 and x32. W7 tried to install on x64 and wasn't able to. x32 it installed successfully (it said) but placed two separate drives in my "Removable Storage" list, none of which worked. When clicked, they both came back with "Please insert a disk into Removable Disc (X: ).

When I went into the removable disk properties they did both have the name, "Lexar CFUDMASD USB Device."


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## Drew2k (Aug 16, 2006)

*Pinnacle PCTV HD Ultimate Stick (TV Tuner)*

I installed the "beta" PCTV Win 7 driver, but Windows 7 MediaCenter is only finding analog channels using my cable line, it can't find any ClearQAM channels. My Vista laptop has no problem getting them.


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## Ken984 (Jan 1, 2006)

I have Win7 x64 installed fine except for some reason 7 reports that my CD/DVD driver cannot be loaded due to a signature problem(it is trying to use a MS driver, and it is the same drive I used to install 7 from). I have to F8 at bootup and force it to bypass driver signature checking or I have no cd drive available.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Trying to install Win 7 RC1 on a friends PC. I boot from DVD, setup file loads OK, I get "starting windows", then the pretty blue screen with the flowers on the right... and that's it! It just sits there. Cursor moves around the screen, but after that screen builds, it hits the DVD drive for about 10 seconds, and then just sits there quietly.

I tried two different install DVD's (both of which have worked for me in the past).

My friend's is a homebrew machine, Asus P4P800 motherboard, 2.5 GB ram, 2.8 GHZ P4. And it passed the 7 "compatibility" test. Anyone run into a problem similar to this? I feel helpless. :scratchin

TIA. /steve


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

FWIW, I'm going to update the BIOS on his motherboard and see what that does. /steve


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

I think it's a dvd +r/-r issue. After walking away about 30 minutes, I came back and setup seemed to have restarted, but it seems like it's taking forever. I now get kicked out of setup after about 22% of "expanding" files. I get a 0x80070570 error which I'm now going to google. /steve


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Not a DVD issue. I burned a new +R at 1x speed, and that doesn't work. Tried two different DVD drives as well. I also formatted and partitioned the hard drive differently, and still choked at 22% expanding. This makes me think it's not disk, but really a memory paging fault. He had 2.5 GB in this machine (2x1GB +512). I'm going to download the PDF for this motherboard and try to understand Single channel vs. Dual channel and how he's got it configured and if he's got the right Dimms in the right slots. Oy vay! :lol: /steve


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## Groundhog45 (Nov 10, 2005)

Steve said:


> Not a DVD issue. I burned a new +R at 1x speed, and that doesn't work. Tried two different DVD drives as well. I also formatted and partitioned the hard drive differently, and still choked at 22% expanding. This makes me think it's not disk, but really a memory paging fault. He had 2.5 GB in this machine (2x1GB +512). I'm going to download the PDF for this motherboard and try to understand Single channel vs. Dual channel and how he's got it configured and if he's got the right Dimms in the right slots. Oy vay! :lol: /steve


Did you ever get this to work? I would suspect a memory problem also. Maybe just use the 2x1Gb and be sure they are in the correct slots, usually 1 and 3. Some motherboards have the slots color coded.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Groundhog45 said:


> Did you ever get this to work? I would suspect a memory problem also. Maybe just use the 2x1Gb and be sure they are in the correct slots, usually 1 and 3. Some motherboards have the slots color coded.


Thanks, Groundhog. I forgot to post back here that I finally did get it to work Friday night, and almost exactly as you said. I had to remove the 512MB chip and put the two 1 GB's in slots 2 and 4 (the black slots). For some reason, in slots 1 and 3 (blue), it wouldn't work, even though the Asus PDF said to use the blue slots first. He used to have the 512MB in slot 3, and the two 1GBs in slots 1 and 2, so I'm wondering if he somehow didn't damage slot 3 by putting that 512 in there? I don't even know if the 512 was the right speed. The 1 GB's were both 3200's, so that was good.

At any rate, all's well now! It was an Asus P4P800, 2002 design and 2004 BIOS. 2.8 Ghz Pentium 4 and Windows 7 appears to run even better than XP SP3 did on it. I was especially impressed with that, because this is the first time I put 7 on a single core machine. He tried running Vista on this same machine when first came out, but had to back it off because the machine crawled. He's very happy with 7, because he feels like he got a new PC, even though this one's about 5-6 years old!

Thanks for checking in.  /steve


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## Hansen (Jan 1, 2006)

I do not use my laptop to play DVD movies normally, but during a recent power outage, decided to toss one in for the kids to keep them occupied. I noticed for the first time that I have no sound when playing a DVD movie. Sound works fine for all other things. I checked hardware properties and didn't see anything that jumped out as a problem. Any suggestions?


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## HDJulie (Aug 10, 2008)

Has anyone installed Windows 7 on a netbook? Is there any reason it wouldn't work on one or is XP still best for the slower processors & only 1 gig of memory.


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## Hansen (Jan 1, 2006)

HDJulie said:


> Has anyone installed Windows 7 on a netbook? Is there any reason it wouldn't work on one or is XP still best for the slower processors & only 1 gig of memory.


My understanding it that it should work very well on a netbook and probably better than XP. OEMs will be using Windows 7 for netbooks in future. I'm using Windows 7 on an ancient laptop (circa 2004) that only has a single core 1.5 ghz intel celeron processor and tried it with 1 gb mem and 2 gb. Works great. No aero effects but that's not unexcepted given the limited graphics hardware on it.


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

Microsoft is targeting Netbooks for Windows 7


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

NickFluth said:


> I have been running Windows 7 now for a couples weeks. I am loving some of the new features, but have been having some annoying issues.
> 
> 1) BSOD - I believe I have corrected this issue. I had an external HD connected via firewire and was getting a power state failure when my PC went into sleep mode. Since I have removed this HD I have not had the BSOD for 3 days now.
> 
> ...


I wouldn't use the Simpletech disk at all, but if you like it - try different enclosure or temporary remove it from the box and test it inside of your PC.


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