Latest Beta 4-in-1 Driver

[Guru]

4.39 Beta - Latest Beta 4-in-1 Driver - This driver addresses some issues with the previous release and incorporates drivers and support for current and future chipsets.

http://www.viahardware.com/download/4in1439vbeta%5B1%5D.exe

[The PIT]

Aaargh 4 in 1's what more have they added to trash your machine.

[impact]

I think the 4 in 1 driver set is quite an achievement for VIA... apparently they make your system (relatively) stable using nothing but trash. I believe this is called recycling; so, in it's own twisted way, VIA has actually set an example which the other companies are soon to follow to keep our planet healthy... or something like that...

[The PIT]

4 in 1 drivers stable me think not.

[Marshmallowman]

via's 4 in 1 drivers are not responsible for all the instability problems out there....I am sure there refrence bios's cause a lot of stabilty problems too

well all the vias since 4.28 have been stable on my kt133a..

[The PIT]

I never said they were. However even Via themselfs advised users to use Microsofts drivers under 98 at one time becuase they were better. George Beese who's done at lot of unoffical work reckons that the Microsoft drivers for newer ide controllers are better than Via's own.

[rugger]

I have never had problems with the 4in1's.

But I don't have a tempermental motherboard or bios either. (I have an Aopen AK-33 KT133-686a southbridge, rock solid for 18 months so far)

I think most of via's problems are of:

1) Poorly designed motherboards with cheap and useless raid controllors on them. *abit ahem!!*
2) Badly written BIOSes that are never really fixed by their creators.
3) Serious bugs in the 686b controller and to a much lessor extent, the KT133(A) chips.

While the 4 in 1's could be a LOT better, everything else probably is conspiring against via writing simple and stable drivers that work for everyone and everywhere.

[Marshmallowman]

hehe..sorry that should have been *VIA* reference bios...

[The PIT]

Don't forget that Via drivers arn't the best with Zip drives and Cd drives.

Rugger point number one I agree. Number two the problem was probably made worse by compoanies pushing the chipset too hard. Number three could have been better handled rather than playing down the bug and claiming that it happens on other chipsets as well.

[rugger]

Originally posted by The PIT
Don't forget that Via drivers arn't the best with Zip drives and Cd drives.

Rugger point number one I agree. Number two the problem was probably made worse by compoanies pushing the chipset too hard. Number three could have been better handled rather than playing down the bug and claiming that it happens on other chipsets as well.

I agree totally. It is much easier to develop and test workarounds for bugs that you publicly acknowledge.

[RANT MODE ON]

For some stupid reason VIA thinks it can do better by pretending it doesn't exist.

My message to VIA: Grow up. Everybody's products have bugs and you do not lose (much) faith by being public about it. In the end, you company will be judged by the not only by the quality of your products, but by how you deal with them and support them after the purchase.

[/RANT MODE OFF]

There!, I hope I have made myself clear

[Joel]

I have three VIA based systems and I don't have any problems with them. I think some of you guys just don't know how to configure a machine.

Joel

[The PIT]

Ah I didn't know Joel was a Via techie.
Of course if you've just a Video card and nothing else it's very hard for even a Via chipset to get it wrong.

I reckon the 686b bug was a deliberate design bug to force a clean operating system install. Did the trick on my win2k, switch on and your win2k partition doesn't exsist anymore.

[Kosh Naranek]

Originally posted by The PIT
I reckon the 686b bug was a deliberate design bug to force a clean operating system install.

Say What ????


Care to explain that ?

[The PIT]

Originally posted by Kosh Naranek


Say What ????


Care to explain that ?

Well I was kidding but if you read on you'd have seen why.

This is what happened. Installed new motherboard switched on selected win2000 warning message about corrupted files. Booted from CD to replace corrupted system files sorry win2k says theres no file system on your hard disk. So I did a clean install a few days later had to do the same as the hard drive was trashed again by the 686b bug.
It's your sblive so I took it out and guess what the system got screwed up again. The eventual solution was too scrap the onboard ide controllers and slap in a promise controller plus a lot bios tweeks which got the system down to the odd random reboot about once per month.

[Matrox Man]

There are no problems with the official 4-in drivers, they are required for proper operation. Don't believe me ask matrox.