ATI, Intel, Realtek and Creative also highlighted as problematic
It has been well documented, and most users are well aware, that the launch of Microsoft's Windows Vista in January 2007 wasn't without severe driver compatibility problems.
So, who was to blame and where did it all go pear-shaped? Though Microsoft's Vista is far from perfect, the problem lay with third party manufacturers and their lacklustre driver support and preparation for Microsoft's new flagship operating system.
Last month, a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft resulted in the unveiling of a Microsoft-compiled list of driver crashes in Vista. The result? NVIDIA is the biggest culprit, but it isn't alone. Listed below are all the manufacturers whose drivers caused more than one percent of all Vista crashes.
- NVIDIA - 28.81%
- Microsoft - 17.97%
- Unknown - 17.07%
- ATI (AMD) - 9.30%
- Intel - 8.83%
- Webroot Software - 3.99%
- Realtek - 3.34%
- Creative Labs - 1.09%
It's fair to say that NVIDIA has a whole lot of hardware out there to support, and therefore its count is likely to be a fair amount higher. But nearly one third of all crashes? That's a little too high.
Microsoft and Unknown are ambiguous categories and taking those aside shows that ATI, NVIDIA's main competitor, was responsible for less than a third of NVIDIA's crash-count.
It isn't entirely clear how Microsoft compiled the list, and the dates from which the data has been collected is listed only as "2007". But still, it doesn't make pretty reading for any of the manufacturers listed. Though Creative Labs caused a smaller 1.09% of all crashes, its initial Vista drivers were well renowned for not functioning as customers had hoped.
To NVIDIA's credit, and indeed to others on the list, fully working Vista drivers are now available and the majority of the problems are history. Fortunately for us consumers, similar driver problems haven't occurred with the release of Vista's Service Pack 1.
