Windows 10 Will Kill The Installation DVD, Finally

alphanumeric said:

My HP Printers have the driver onboard, You can install it from the printer when you plug the USB cable in. It's stored in flash memory in the device. It's updateable too with a utility from HP, just like updating the firmware. I think I only ever used it once when I did the initial WIFI setup on my wireless Laserjet. Now all I do is turn it on and Windows finds it and installs the drivers in the background.

Ha, that's good one.

alphanumeric said:

My HP Printers have the driver onboard, You can install it from the printer when you plug the USB cable in. It's stored in flash memory in the device. It's updateable too with a utility from HP, just like updating the firmware. I think I only ever used it once when I did the initial WIFI setup on my wireless Laserjet. Now all I do is turn it on and Windows finds it and installs the drivers in the background.

There is quite a story behind that driver that comes from the printer. Years ago, I use to work for that company that started in a little garage in Palo Alto. This story was going around the company. It seems one of the adversaries of the U.S. in the middle east had a nuclear lab equipped with HP printers. Well some organization (CIA?) managed to add a virus to the nuke labs printer firmware. The story was, the middle east nuke lab would clean the virus from their computers, but it kept coming back from somewhere (the printers), messing up their work.

I am sticking to my thoroughly stupid HP Deskjet 930, bought one new got two more as spares when they were replaced and ditched by a former employer. They are USB and parallel and I use USB.

I just gave printer driver as an example. Stuff like Zipdrive could do the same thing now tnat huge memory can be stuck on small chips. Especially if it is a Windows only hw then it would only need a 32 and 64 bit version on chip. Similar to boot strapping from BIOS disk support to loaded driver, have minimal necessary device support needed to copy the Windows or whatever off the device then get the sophisticated driver off the media in the device.

Indianatone said:

That is irony at its best :)
Still you'll be able to make your on USB drives of 64 and 32 bit and with a little bit of fiddling Home and Pro.
Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way

or Windows 7 tool:

Windows USB/DVD Download Tool - Microsoft Store

You probably know this but other users may fine the links useful.

Thanks for the tip.

musky said:

what happens when the usb stick screws up and you have to format it you will lose the operating system on it.

The same thing that happens when you drop the DVD in the floor and step on it.LOL

labeeman said:

The same thing that happens when you drop the DVD in the floor and step on it.LOL

In which case you have to re-floor-mat it to recover your data.

musky said:

what happens when the usb stick screws up and you have to format it you will lose the operating system on it.

Copy the files to another location as a backup before that happens.

swarfega said:

Thanks for the tip.

The Windows 7 DVD download Tool was my go to tool at one time. If memory serves me though, it formats in NTFS, that doesn't work so well for UEFI installs on some devices. These days I just use diskpart, works for Windows 7, 8.1 and 10. The one drive is good for legacy and UEFI installs too.