I test Preview Builds on an old PC. No sense in using unstable software on a productive system. Now, when I say old, I mean OLD. This thing has an AMD Athlon 64 X2 (Socket 939), 3GB DDR RAM, and an Ati Radeon HD 3850 AGP. That's how old it is. It only runs 32-bit Win 10 despite being a 64 bit system, because it lacks CMPXCH16b.
I have been testing Preview Builds on this hardware from the very beginning and everything was working fine up until about half a year ago when the graphics drivers stopped working. This seems to be a problem with many (all?) AGP cards, as I have read several other questions about it here and on the feedback hub, but so far no solution. I filed a report for all the builds I tested with the feedback app, but so far nothing has changed.
Symptoms:
* "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)" for "ATI Radeon HD 3850 AGP" (PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9515&SUBSYS_002818BC&REV_00\4&3600494A&0&0008) in Device Manager
Tried solutions:
* Uninstalled all previous drivers and used the Microsoft Basic Display Driver. Windows update automatically downloads and installs a new driver when I hit the "Update Driver" button. (Driver Date: 13 January 2015, Version 8.970.100.9001). Result: Code 43. BTW: This seems to be the driver that worked before and now does not any more.
* I tried the same with all other drivers available to me:
:* From the AMD web page I tried the catalyst 13.1 and 13.4_beta drivers (latest available, build for Windows 7/8) These worked on 10 before, too; to test I even installed them on a test installation of the current stable build.
:* Drivers provided by http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/ ("X86-ar_bg_zh-tw_cs_da_de_el_e...lt_zh-cn_pt_zh-hk_ja-nec-20813855_87923c8bb67e2128747f97506937420fe3835e06" and "X86-ar_bg_zh-tw_cs_da_de_el_e...lt_zh-cn_pt_zh-hk_ja-nec-20865885_336cc781fea7e8e44bb4de87b44ceb3c6c563932")
All of these four options return a Code 43 or won't load at all.
Questions:
* Is there any other driver I could try?
* Will Microsoft officially drop AGP support in the next stable (August) release? What about other old legacy hardware? I'm maintaining several older systems at work, if these stop working in a month, tell me now so I can prevent the August update from being installed at all.
* Why is there a driver being installed via the update button that does not work?
Again: I know this is old hardware and it probably is about time that AGP support was dropped since it only uses up resources that can be applied more productively elsewhere. My problem is more with the way this is communicated to the costumers: Not at all!
***Post moved by the moderator to the appropriate forum category.***
