Re: MS dropping peripherals support - AGAIN
"but it's not really something Microsoft has control over"
Depends on whether or not the problem is caused by changes MS have made to the way drivers interact with the system - in theory, so long as you can still physically connect the peripheral to the PC, then it ought to be possible to continue using the original drivers to drive said peripheral so long as the OS lets you, because the hardware hasn't changed, the original drivers haven't changed, so the only thing left that could change and break stuff is the OS. At which point the ball would very definitely be back in MS's court.
Problems can also arise due to MS messing around with how Windows deals with new devices when they're first connected, which can make it harder than it ought to be to even attempt to install older drivers - when I tried connecting my old Canon Pixma inkjet to my new W11 laptop, as soon as I plugged in the USB cable (noting that at this point I hadn't tried to pre-install any of the old Canon drivers I still had lying around), 11 was automatically enumerating it as being something other than a printer rather than simply deciding, as it ought to have done, that it actually had no idea what it was I'd plugged in and leaving it listed as an unknown device in need of manual driver installation. You know, a bit like how older versions of Windows used to behave when new stuff got connected. Again, that's on MS and MS alone.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
