>Mel and Rick,
>
>I guess so but what surprised me is that when I initially installed Win8 it just worked,
>picked everything up. Then back to Win7 nothing worked. And then back to Win8
>it once again picked it all up. I must assume then that Win8 has the drivers (or native
>compatibable) drivers built in?


The manufacturers have to tell Windows about their new driver requirements. Often times on newer hardware the old drivers work just fine, but there is some proprietary circuitry added up front which prevents it from working until it receives the proper proprietary "wakeup call" which can be as simple as a particular value written to a particular data port. Once it receives that wakeup call, then the old driver, re-branded as the new driver (the one which sends the wakeup call and then works like the old one did) will function.

It's sad.

It's pathetic actually what the hardware manufacturers are doing to all of us consumers in the search of monetary profits. We should have completely universal drivers by now, standard APIs across the board, with some extensions which make a particular brand more desirable thereby competing on merits alone. There should be well developed, well tested protocols, resulting in multiple brands of powerful custom-built operating system alternatives made possible by this generic hardware specification that's out in the open.

There are some VERY clever people out there. They are thwarted by this kind of closed, proprietary mindset.

It's why I keep teaching it: proprietary models only harm people. Sharing, on the other hand, always grows everybody up together, allowing the contributions given to the various men and women by God (through their special and unique talents, abilities, history, education, experience, etc.), to then be received and used as a new baseline by the people in general.

Any new Microsoft products are to be completely avoided in my opinion.