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Got called out by an IT manager in Phoenix for skipping driver verification
I was helping a small law firm in Phoenix upgrade their office computers about 3 months ago. I loaded up the generic drivers for their network cards like I always have for years. The IT manager they contract with walked in and saw what I did. He pulled me aside and told me that approach causes weird latency issues he's tracked back to wrong driver versions 7 times in the past year. I've been using manufacturer-specific drivers from the board support pages ever since. Has anyone else run into hidden problems from using generic Windows drivers?
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thomas.parker9d ago
Ngl the IT manager in Phoenix was probably right though. I've seen generic drivers cause random drops on Realtek chips especially. But I gotta gently push back on one thing - he said 7 times in the past year? Honestly that sounds a little high unless he's managing like 200+ machines. I run into maybe 2 or 3 cases a year where a generic driver actually causes noticeable latency. Could be he's counting every little hiccup or maybe his clients have weird network setups. Tbh most of the time Windows Update grabs the right one anyway for common brands.
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