You can help make longhorn better!

I also vote for the CD/DVD or USB option. I have no floppy drive now, and I don't plan on ever buying one.

It would also be nice to see MS incorporate an unattended install routine, complete with a menu to select/deselect programs from installing, services to start, and not use any unneeded drivers. Then have this process automatically ask for a blank CD to burn your new (and possibly slimmer) automated install CD, without having to go through all the trouble of modifying winnt.sif and the like, then testing it out on a virtual machine :rolleyes:
 
Floppies should have died YEARS ago. Count this as my vote for CD/USB driver installation support!
-Ghent
 
Ugh, yeah it was an unpleasant experience building a new Shuttle XPC for a friend and starting the install only to find I needed SATA drivers from a floppy disk. Hmm....that XPC didn't even have a spot for the floppy drive. They preinstall card readers there instead. So I had an old floppy drive hooked up and hanging out the side until I was up and running.

Joy!
 
this would make life so much easier.. I don't see why they wouldn't implement it.
 
the only reason i ever reccomend that people have a floppy drive on their computer is for this reason and this reason alone.

most motherboards today support usb mass storage devices as boot devices, and have done so for the last 2 years. it used to be that so much software was written that required special hardware to take full advandate of the features... and now the tables have turned, with the most critical portion of the most popular operating system lagging behind the times without full featured support of what is available.

please, microsoft, if linux can do it, so can you, right? i mean, that's what you say, right?
 
Empyrean said:
I don't understand why these drivers can't be included on the Windows installation CD... which would make loading from another source not even an issue. Many standard drivers are already found on the CD, and you have the ability to update them once you get the OS up and running.
Click to expand...

WinXP came out ages before SATA. How can you include a driver for a device that doesn't exist? Intel has some engineering workaround for it, but the bottom line is that there are no SATA drivers on a regular WinXP CD.
 
I've been involved in several MS Beta's, and I will definitley chime in to say this is needed. Given the amount of time Longhorn will be the mainstream OS, there's no telling how many hardware changes will occur. We're already seeing many Mainboards that don't even have a floppy controller, forcing those users to go through the process of manually adding the drivers to the install files. You're already reading files off of the CD-Rom during the install, why not add the support?

And on a side note, I would love it if all setup questions were asked at the begining instead of stringing them out. It's annoying to have to be present, while windows installs itself. I know perfectly well how to make an unattended setup, but this would be a nice change for the average user.

 
Well I add my vote to add support for CD/DVD/USB loading.

My last two builds acctually have no floppy what so ever. I have 1 floppy drive that I ripped out of a dinosaur PC laying in the "tech-box" for "emergencies" but I would never load my system down with a ancient part like that.

Now added to that its is often so that 1 Floppy drive isnt enough you have to have 1 in Each System given the situation that pretty often occurs that you have to download things on one PC to repair or install on another. Therefore you need to have a floppydrive in each of them. Now given the speed and capacity of a floppy drive I just cant justfy the cost of having one regardless of whther I want to burden my system with one or not.

I do use MS software and I even pay for it and I would really like the possibility of installing Floppyfree.
 
Sign me up for the thumb drive vote!

Most people can afford one, and if not they could still have the option for using floppies.
 
Add my vote! CD/USB device would be excellent
 
I'm not so sure about the drama of "if this thread dies, all hope dies with it..." but as a desktop and server configuration guy at a Fortune 100 company that helps build and deploy images and operating systems (we buy Microsoft, 100% of desktops and 60% of servers)...

NOBODY USES THE FLOPPY DRIVE ANYMORE.

I'm sure from Microsoft's standpoint, a CD/DVD-ROm driver would be easier to implement for swapping in drivers, but USB support for drivers would be a "nice to have."

As it stands we have to spend countless engineer hours putting in all our mass-storage drivers into an integrated bootable-build DVD, and we'd love to be able to do "one-offs" and testing more easily than messing with floppies.

Thanks!
 
Well since every time i have to reinstall windows i have to ripe my SFF apart to hotwire in a flopy drive just to install windows it would be nice to see some modern TEK implimented into the new windows.....Nothing like cutting edge software with Dos like installers.......
 
I vote for ANYTHING other than floppy. I haven't had one for a while now (I still install everyting to IDE drive as far as the system goes), and I have stayed away from installing to SATA and SCSI devices that would require the floppy pr0n fest (stick it in, yank it out, rinse, repeat...)
 
the only reason i have a floppy drive in my computer is because of SATA drivers for Win XP. please MS, dont make me need it for longhorn.
 
My vote X10. I haven't had a floppy in my PC since windows 2000 came out. Not to mention the far more important fact that none of my servers have floppies. Being able to put them on a USB drive would rock but I would settle for CD/DVD.
 
The floppy disk requirement needs to go the way of the dodo. Laptops just don't come with them standard anymore. The USB drive option is a good idea, but I think the CD-ROM option has greater appeal: far more people have CD writers than they do USB drives. I had to go out and buy a floppy drive to put in my SATA drive as the primary. I ended up have to manually browse my driver CD for the files I needed (poor implimentation by the mobo manufacturer) and then put it on a floppy drive at work. It was a very retched experience.
 
I've never seen a huge popularity with CD-RW, and felt that the CD-ROM didn't truly replace the floppy disk... instead people found alternate ways of transporting data, such as email and file sharing. The USB drive... it seems like it could really replace the floppy disk as a person's hardware copy of personal data.

That being said... CD-ROM or USB Drive support for drivers would be great! The last thing I want to do when building a new computer is dig through my hot attic trying to find a working floppy drive and cable. It's very frustrating, and then as a bonus, I have to find another computer that is working, get the floppy drive hooked up there, find the right drivers that actually fit in the 1.44MB space allotted... then repeat the process four or five times because I grabbed the wrong ones... even if I keep doing it the "stupid" way it would be much smoother if I was using a USB drive for all this!

Miniaturization is king!
 
How about this Option......include most of the mass starage drivers in windows......lets see there are about 6 company that provide like 95% of the hardware.......also you could think about putting in the drivers for the more common components......like nforce chipset drivers.....and Via drivers......its not like there are 400 chipsets makers........there are like 4
 
I, for one, would encourage MS to implement this as well. Floppy drives are too small, too slow and too unreliable to be continuously put into new PCs. Sure, they're cheap, but so are USB sticks and CD media. It only makes sense!!
 
Every time I need to install xp on a machine that needs to use a floppy drive I end up looking around for like an hour to find a floppy drive. The time before last I ended up running up to compusa and buying a floppy drive after loosing like an hour looking for one. The last time I couldn't find the drive I bought and ended up pulling one out of another computer that happened to have one in it for some strange reason(why it did I don't know). It is a pain in the ass and I hope they change it.
 
There must be support for adding Raid drivers other than a floppy disk , we're in 2005 not 1995. the only time floppies are used on my network is to install those raid drivers and to flash the bioses and by the time i need them again they dont work anymore because dust got in them or whatnot. if they don't want to add support for thumbdrives and whatnot at the very minimum there needs to be a way to do it off a cd without having to go thru the whole slipstreaming process.

i can't even beleive they arn't realy sure it will be implemented , i couldn't beleve floppies were still the only way xp could load its mass storage drivers the first time i used it and now microsoft plans on forceing us to keep floppies around until at least 2010? (guesstimate longhorn comming out 2006 with a 4-5 years lifespan)
 
If you read the factual results on RAID0 on a desktop, you quickly realize this isn't an issue anymore because there's no reason to use RAID0 anymore. :)
 
CD/DVD PLEASE! I am so tired to setting up systems anf having to leave the case open while I install the OS just so I can have a floopy attached so I can load drivers that only come on a CD in the first place.

PLEASE!!!!!!!!
 
No more Floppy! It is so much easier to use a cd. Why? Because alot of people dont install floppy drives anymore. CD is the obvious replacement to floppy.
 
djnes said:
If you read the factual results on RAID0 on a desktop, you quickly realize this isn't an issue anymore because there's no reason to use RAID0 anymore. :)
Click to expand...
Unless you condsider the fact that the Nintendo Gen is going to want to edit all their HD home movies on their Dell in about 2 years. Hey, look at me! I only think of the Now!

Die floppy, die.
 
THough I'm jumping in here late, and w/o reading anything else, I doubt how forum posts = M$ attention but I add mine nonetheless.
 
HERE IT IS. THE BEST SUGGESTION!


They need to figure out how to CORRECTLY tell you how much time is left when you're copying/moving files! I am so sick of copying a ton of files and seeing the time jump from 157minutes, 30 seconds, 49 minutes, 3 seconds, 48984 years.

If they can put a man on the moon, they can figure out how long it takes to copy a folder full of files for fuck's sake. :mad: :mad: :mad:
 
I got so damn tired of dragging my floppy out of the closet, I just broke down and put it into my case. Please God, YES, no more floppies. :(
 
1 more vote from me for USB/CD support.

Just a sidenote thought. I saw someone talk about how floppy drives are cheap and such and its not that hard to put one in. Well yeah although that IS true, I bet there are plenty of people out there in situations like me. I've got a small form computer and every spot in it is packed with hard drives, and theres no room for a silly floppy drive which will only be used that one freakin time. I'm sure I just repeated what someone else has already posted, yah, sorry, I didn't get around to reading every single post before mine. :rolleyes:
 
Oh for the love of God, USB drives please. I love those little guys, they are the new floppy disks. Please, please, please do your part to kill the floppy.
 
Saw the front page and thought "No F****ng Way!"

It was ok that they did it for windows 2000 (computers that couldn’t boot from cdroms were still common) floppies were included for the install after all.

By the time Xp came out things had changed, there was widespread adoption of bootable cd's, to the extent of floppy disk drives not being included on many new pc's. But you could only add controller card drivers from floppies. There was no reason for this and lack of sata drivers coursed unneeded hassle for many.

Now much further into the future (it will be by the time Longhorn ships). Floopies will be more less extinct anyway. Makes no sense whatsoever!



Now sing along:D

The floppies, the floppies on fire
We don't need no water let the mother****ers burn
Burn mother****ers, burn!
 
LOL.Anything but a floppy, I haven't had a floppy in any of my systems in years, they are a total waste of time and money. But I do have a old one I keep in my dest just for reloading Windows and I must say it's a pain iin the butt just because Windows requires it for the drivers, Windows needs to keep this feature in Longhorn, seems like MS may have a lot of stock in a floppy company or something.
 
Another vote for USB/CD/DVD support.

I think everyone's pretty much said everything i could. I bought a floppy drive for my new system and got the one with the 7 in 1 card reader just so it could be more useful.
 
drizzt81 said:
WinXP came out ages before SATA. How can you include a driver for a device that doesn't exist?
Click to expand...
Two words.

Service Pack.

I really don't think this should even be a discussion. If MS isn't doing this (USB/CD drivers) already, it's VERY shortsighted.

Also, what I'd rather see is more drivers in SPs. Not every new card under the sun, but add SATA drivers with service packs, so the above point is less of an issue. Especially since new OSes aren't coming out every 2 years.
 
MS needs to do this. The floppy is dead. I really would like to see the ablity to load from CD as that is the most common way for drivers to be shipped.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top