Windows Vista Will Not Support Old DVD Drives

[Kent Pribbernow]

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/12/09/502014.aspx

"Windows Vista will not have support for really old DVD drives. (The information below was kindly provided to me by the optical storage driver team.) When PC DVD drives first came out in 1998, the drives themselves did not have support for region codes but instead relied on (and in fact the DVD specification required) the operating system to enforce region coding, with the further understanding that starting on January 1, 2000 all newly-manufactured drives would support region coding in hardware rather than relying on software enforcement. For the purpose of this discussion, I will call the two types of drives "old" (manufactured before 2000) and "new" (manufactured on or after January 1, 2000)."



Not surprising. Older technologies are often left behind in major operating system upgrades. This is simply further evidence that older PCs are not going to be well suited to run Vista. If you have your heart set on loading Vista, be prepared to upgrade some of your hardware as well. Unless you happen to be already running a system that is less than a couple years old, in which case you should "probably" be fine.

[Kent Pribbernow]

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/12/09/502014.aspx

"Windows Vista will not have support for really old DVD drives. (The information below was kindly provided to me by the optical storage driver team.) When PC DVD drives first came out in 1998, the drives themselves did not have support for region codes but instead relied on (and in fact the DVD specification required) the operating system to enforce region coding, with the further understanding that starting on January 1, 2000 all newly-manufactured drives would support region coding in hardware rather than relying on software enforcement. For the purpose of this discussion, I will call the two types of drives "old" (manufactured before 2000) and "new" (manufactured on or after January 1, 2000)."



Not surprising. Older technologies are often left behind in major operating system upgrades. This is simply further evidence that older PCs are not going to be well suited to run Vista. If you have your heart set on loading Vista, be prepared to upgrade some of your hardware as well. Unless you happen to be already running a system that is less than a couple years old, in which case you should "probably" be fine.

[Jason Dunn]

Not a big deal I think. In fact, I'd gladly support even more jettisoning of old crappy hardware support if it meant a more stable Vista.