Anyone know how to run system restore in Vista, or if it even works?
Lastly … I installed Vista from my MSDN subscription, since I did not
receive an Beta invitation. Of course I have encountered situations, aka
bugs, that need to be reported. So, anyone have the Vista beta moderator
handy so I can request entry into the Vista beta?
The problem on which I need to report a bug, came about by not correctly
creating my driver install media. I added the SYS and INF files for the
Vista install, but forgot the WdfCointstaller DLL. The hardware wizard had
already found the mass storage controller I wanted to use my driver to
control, and marked it as “Other devices” class. I told it to install from
my media. The install failed since this is a WDF drive and the coinstaller
could not be found. However, the install did not gracefully fail. It left
just enough information in the registry to prevent the hardware wizard from
running again, or the system even knowing that the HBA even existed. I
manually entered the registry, deleted the
HKLM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\Vendor&Device\Instance I found and rebooted.
That time the wizard found the unresolved hardware and I installed the
driver properly. But it would have been nice if the failed install had
unwound itself properly.
Caveat: Seagate does not make nor write HBA device drivers, but we do do
diagnostics and that does require such low level control that the storage
stack and OEM drivers can be a pain in the ass to use. Remember, ATA pass
through does not work pre-XP SP2, and even in the latest release,
multi-sector PIO is basically broken. To do that which is not supported,
there are times we have to provide our own HBA support, and lobby Microsoft
to fix that which is not functioning properly. Anyone else need multi-sector
PIO in ATA pass through for a pre-Vista OS?
–
The personal opinion of
Gary G. Little