all power options are gone!

[CountMike]

Sorry but can't totally agree about windows finding drivers. Although W8 has gone long way in finding drivers for all kinds of hardware, it is downloading and installing driver only from MS data base, does not download drivers from the HW manufactures. They are just basic drivers, without bells and whistles "real" drivers usually provide. Win8 silently downloaded drivers for some really ancient and strange HW when I installed it, drivers that I was hunting for long time while using win7. There were few drivers like for Kworld TV card and Bearpaw scanner that were wrong but luckily I was able to find some modified drivers for them. On the other hand, drivers for printers HP4l, HP6and even HP3 and hp1300 were unattainable from HP but now work just fine from MS data base. As I can attest to, if there 's no harm in trying to find drivers thru MS if all else fails but is still best to get them from OEM if they exist. And yes there's a lot of drivers that do not exist in MS data base but can be found other ways. Other ways to find some drivers that are particularly difficult to find is to check at forums. especially ones that deal with the manufacturers for that HW, there are ways and it's being done, to modify drivers from older OSs even from XP, one of them is for my Bearpaw scanner and said Tv card, both modified from w7 and XP drivers to work with win8. The worst case scenario is for "unknown device", than you are in for some serious digging. Fortunately there's no too many non "plug&pray" HW that fits newer systems,otherwise that would be real nightmare.

 

[XweAponX]

Well, Count Mike, the only Drivers you need to worry about from MS are the Video drivers they offer, which have a high probability of being the wrong drivers. Actually, what I mean is - WORRY about MS offering Video Drivers, and DON'T GET THEM.

I'm just saying, for the most part, MS finds what is needed when it is needed. No person who buys good video cards will ever allow MS updates for them, they will get them from the Maker.

All other drivers, chipset drivers,m Modem, Audio drivers, the ones MS finds are more than sufficient.

But my idea is, if your Original Drivers work? Leave em alone!

It is the same principle, when I go to the Doctor and I tell him, "My elbow hurts when I move it this way"

Even if he offers an operation, his best advice will be "Then DON'T move it 'That Way'"

 

[XweAponX]

If you REALLY need to know an Unknown Device, I suggest using Aida64, which will ID each piece of hardware on the board, by reading it's identification. There is One and One Only program that finds Unknown Hardware, it;s on Hiren's and that's what it's called - I'll find out for anyone who actually needs it.

Ok, it;s called Device Doctor - Use it on the Hiren's disk, don't install it. But treat what it finds with suspicion. Best bet? Don;t use it to download for stuff that already HAS drivers, only use it for UNKNOWN devices.

You see, these garbage Driver programs, have found a RACKET. They have found a NICHE and have EXPLOITED it.

I would say, just stick with Driverguide.com, it's the only service really dedicated to finding real drivers.

 

[CountMike]

Well, Count Mike, the only Drivers you need to worry about from MS are the Video drivers they offer, which have a high probability of being the wrong drivers. Actually, what I mean is - WORRY about MS offering Video Drivers, and DON'T GET THEM.

I'm just saying, for the most part, MS finds what is needed when it is needed. No person who buys good video cards will ever allow MS updates for them, they will get them from the Maker.

All other drivers, chipset drivers,m Modem, Audio drivers, the ones MS finds are more than sufficient.

But my idea is, if your Original Drivers work? Leave em alone!

It is the same principle, when I go to the Doctor and I tell him, "My elbow hurts when I move it this way"

Even if he offers an operation, his best advice will be "Then DON'T move it 'That Way'"

I understand you, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" but there's a bunch of reasons to have better or newer drivers, so should keep all the options open. It's not only for GPU and like good and even necessary to have full drivers, if for instance a generic driver does not let you modify options for, let's say a printer, so you can't use all of its capabilities, than it's not of much use. Another example is drivers for Realtec sound drivers, generic MS ones have only basic settings and OEM ones give you so much more.

 

[XweAponX]

Yes, it's best to have the newest drivers. But you save your OEM driver disks anyway. Install the original OEM driver, then when MS downloads the update, all the extra functions are there.

Myself, I never USE the extra cack that comes with like, HP Printers. I just want the Printer Driver. A Driver should be small - Not a huge program using Gigs of Memory like what HP makes.

But if you think cack proVIRUSgrams like DriverVirusMax is gonna give you the newest full HP Printer drivers, thats not gonna happen.

 

[CountMike]

Driverguide asks for money and there's a lot of places on earth from where it is very difficult or impossible to pay from. Using Vendor device ID brought me into dead end few times with all this hyper production of fake HW.

 

[CountMike]

Yes, it's best to have the newest drivers. But you save your OEM driver disks anyway. Install the original OEM driver, then when MS downloads the update, all the extra functions are there.

Myself, I never USE the extra cack that comes with like, HP Printers. I just want the Printer Driver. A Driver should be small - Not a huge program using Gigs of Memory like what HP makes.

But if you think cack proVIRUSgrams like DriverVirusMax is gonna give you the newest full HP Printer drivers, thats not gonna happen.

Well, I like to be able to use all the capabilities of HW and basic drivers are just not going to give me that. And no, Driver max and like programs did not give or found me those drivers but SlimDrivers did not give me no viruses either.

 

[XweAponX]

Well, I never pay for Driverguide, you can use it once a week without paying, right? That should be enough but ya gotta read what people say about the driver you are getting. Make sure.

Anyway, Aida64 finds out what is actually in your machine, it will tell you precisely what's in there. It read the vendor ID, but it also finds out what it IS. It also offers to download it for you, for a price, but it's good enough to know what to look for then you can find it yourself in a search.

Try out "Device Doctor" and also "Unknown Device" in Hirens. But don't install either program into your machine.

Finding Drivers on the net, thats what I do, I charge people for it. It's cos I'm good and figuring it out. Sometimes it is impossible to find a driver for something, and you have to settle for running the device on the OS intended for it. For me, that's Pro Tools 6.4 on XP.

 

[XweAponX]

Well, I like to be able to use all the capabilities of HW and basic drivers are just not going to give me that. And no, Driver max and like programs did not give or found me those drivers but SlimDrivers did not give me no viruses either.

The only devices that require you to have all the extras are AIO Printer/Scanners.

Any other device that requires other things to run, is a specialty item like my Digi 001. IN that case you get the drivers from Avid/Digidesign and ONLY Avid/Digidesign.

 

[CountMike]

Well, I like to be able to use all the capabilities of HW and basic drivers are just not going to give me that. And no, Driver max and like programs did not give or found me those drivers but SlimDrivers did not give me no viruses either.

The only devices that require you to have all the extras are AIO Printer/Scanners.

Any other device that requires other things to run, is a specialty item like my Digi 001. IN that case you get the drivers from Avid/Digidesign and ONLY Avid/Digidesign.

Hmmm, basic drivers for HP1300 did not give me some options like choosing from which tray to use paper from or some paper sizes but OEM ones from HP on Win XP gave me that and more. Also, basic drivers from MS for Realtec sound did not give me more than 10% of what OEM ones can do.
Are you part of "Digidesign" ? seen some nifty things there.

 

[XweAponX]

yah I have an 001, which is old. But the driver installs with Pro Tools. I also have a driver that sends WMP to the Digi, and the CD audio into inputs 7 and 8 on the Digi.

I have a Realtek audio card on my systems, but it shows up as "High Def Audio Device" on this system. I have the output set at 24 bit/96kHz which when connected to my surround sound system is massive. I also have Bass Management, Virtual Surround, and Loudness Equalization. It's an MS driver too. To get to the Enhancements, you have to pull up Properties in for the output that is live, in my case that is "Speakers" - I know it's Realtek, but it uses the MS HD Audio.

On my Media system, the Audio goes through the HDMI cable, so it used the Nvidia HD Audio. It has most of the same enhancements. It's true Surround sound WHEN a surround signal is present, 3 Front, 2 rear. But it only gives me 24bit/48kHz, which is basically 96kHz anyway. Some vendors SAY 96kHz, but what they mean is L&R 48kHz. It's all the same, you wont get higher than 48k per stereo channel- UNLESS there are some new standards that have come out in the last few years, that allow 192kHz. Sound Blaster cards sometimes have 32 bit processing- I can EDIT 32bit WAV files using Sound Forge 9, which works great on Windows 8 and not even in compatibility mode. But I can't PLAY them- The system downgrades the output to 24 bit.

I'll bet if you used the MS drivers for the Realtek, you will get the most of the same features. The Realtek driver has the added function of identifying what you have plugged in to the 1/8th inch jacks. I use SP/DIF when I can, I'm using SP/DIF to connect the TV to the Surround system.

 

[CountMike]

Just a decent sound is all I need, nothing fancy, digital, Dolby or whatever and this Realtek ALC892 provides me with enough sound thru 2 triple speaker sets. With R271 drivers and it's control panel there is enough settings to satisfy. But (there always has to be one) there's a problem (pretty annoying) that I can't solve. When we are at subject of drivers and sound, I hope nobody minds if I ask here. I have an awful lag between input and output of almost 2 seconds. It is most annoying when watching TV thru a Tv card. It looks like an old Kung fu movie, see people open their mouth and sound comes couple of seconds later. It is same on all analog sound inputs even when transferring thru the PCI bus. Lowering sound resolution to the lowest point helps somewhat but than sound is terrible. When using Skype there's no perceptible lag with microphone but when I use it for recording or monitor sound there goes that lag again. When plying movies, Youtube or staff like that everything is hanky dory. The same thing was happening with Win7. I did not have the same HW when I was using XP but there were no problems like that. I don't have equipment to use digital sound so I'm stuck with analog only.

 

[XweAponX]

When you are using a sound system with Digital Inputs - Mine has both SP/DIF and TOSlink (fibre optic cable) - Then once you start using that, ya don't go back to Analog Audio.

Except for your Mackintosh or Marantz power amps to go with your Turntables, I use a Marantz for DJing. I used to have an old Radio Shack DJ Mixer which was made by NuMark- It was the best DJ mixer I had.

I don't know why there would be a time lag on your Audio, using VLC you can correct it. All I can think of is that you need to increase your Audio Buffer size. I cna do that with my ASIO panel for Pro Tools, Actually with Pro Tools there is also a time lag between my Direct input and my Playback - And the way I deal with that is to use Low Latency Monitoring.

When I used to use Pro Tools 8 on a laptop with an M-Box, there was no Low Latency Monitoring, it was a pain to monitor what you were adding.

So as far as that lag, if there is any way to adjust your Buffer size and Latency... Latency is basically, the time it takes for the signal to get from one side of the component to the other. Perhaps you have something in the Audio Path interfering, maybe even Skype.

I'd check all of your Startup programs, see if any of them use your Audio Card for any reason.

You say it's the TV card - There should be ways to adjust the Audio Buffer and Latency in the software for that card... Is it Hauppauge? Falcon? I have a very old BT878 in this system, it's never had any lag whatsoever.

 

[CountMike]

Wish I could go all digital but financial side just said nooooo. Just too late and expensive to go changing everything. Anyway, TV card is Kworld with Philips 7131 chip, it's analog receiver with straight thru the PCI bus video and sound transfer. As my country did not go all digital yet, it was supposed to kill all analog over the air TV last year but for some reasons they let it stay 'till 2015 I did not want to invest into new TV card too soon and I was right, couple of years ago they switched from DVB-T to DVB-T2 and rendered everything obsolete. I live at outskirts of Belgrade and local cable company is simply disaster. For internet I had to settle for WiFi just because of said cable service that provides lousy internet too. ADSL is out of question because few years ago I disconnected landline phone an switched to cell phones only. Anyway, internet provider is supposed to give me IPTV access soon so the TV card will go into retirement or just as backup only.
Sorry for ranting but just wanted you to know what kind of obstacles there are. I think I managed to get most of the lag off by adjusting program I'm using for TV (Chrys TV) to use DirectX. I kept that setting off thinking that it would provide just an obstacle but it turned out it helped and that did not help at Win7 so I guess that DirectX 11 changed some things.
Btw, I tried few other TV cards with Bt878 chips but proved to hard to control on W7 and 8 but worked just fine with XP and W95/98 and even Millennium. Soon I will try recording from the old record player and will see if monitoring for it can be similarly adjusted. I checked all the sound drivers and settings and there was no adjustments for buffering and latency, at least I could not find them.

 

[XweAponX]

The TV card you got should have advanced audio settings where you can manipulate the buffer sizes and the latency.

 

[CountMike]

Wish it had, it should have but nothing like that. There are some settings that might influence those values but just make it wors. Anyway, i think it is good enough for now.

 

[XweAponX]

If you were using the Audio Output of those cards to play LOCAL Audio and Video files, there wold be a Lag. You can program VLC to choose the RealTek Audio driver, that would take care of the lag for those. It's in Advanced Prefs.

 

[CountMike]

That's just it, nothing LOCAL plays with any lag, not even Youtube or internet TV. Movies, video, audio from HDDs and all other media has no problems using any player, just when using analog (microphone and line in) and PCi bus. Tried few standalone audio cards and exactly the same thing, must be something the way windows handle those things. I'm not aware if VLC can display from TV card. will give it a try again.
Edit
Just tried newest VLC, looks like it has option to play TV from digital TV card but I have analog one, so scratch that option.

 

[hagimostafa]

a friend in microsoft community suggested this:
I guess I solved this problem with the definitive solution. There is a bug (almost a bad joke), but it is on the code (windows) which reads the power cfg. Somehow, the NAMES of the power profiles got deleted. If you type "powercfg -l", can you see a name, like this (Balanced)?

Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e (Balanced) *


If, like me, you cannot, help yourself to this command:
powercfg -changename <GUID> <any name you want>


(yes, you have to copy that GUID).


It solved everything here. Just thought I'd share.
---------
now i have retrieved my power plans and their settings can be shown in power options! but still closing the lid, power button and screen brightness settings are gone!
meanwhile in my list there were no "balanced" phrase, in fact there were nothing after GUID! i guess this might be a bug!

 

[XweAponX]

Hmn, if that was the case, you should have been able to "Create a New Power Profile"...
Well, so you got it back? That's great! And sorry we hijacked your thread for a while hehehe,