evil, cynical, sneaky gigabyte just removed xp drivers for the g1.sniper3 boards

[xphero]

vista and xp drivers were there from 1½ years ago till 14 days ago, now theyre gone

why gigabyte ... why !


http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4169#dl

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4168#dl

all other z77 boards still have those drivers :

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/list.aspx?s=42&jid=3&p=2&v=24


thousands of customers rely on those drivers ... its a scandaL !

possible reason :

microsoft hate the fact that windows xp and vista still is make up 40 % of the global OS share. for money reasons, they'd like everybody to drop old OS's and buy the newest Micro-crap every three years. they know their april 2014 support deadline probably wont make people ditch xp, so their newest tactics seem to be to force / threaten / talk hardware producers into dropping xp / vista driver support completely, and removing all related drivers from sites

intel and others could easily make drivers for z87 and upcoming x99 chipsets, but MS has probably told them not to. z77 and x79 is the officially last supported vista/xp chipsets, and now all the big mobo producers are starting to remove drivers for old products

gigabyte, why did you remove those drivers ? please restore them

i've contacted gigabyte tech support about this, but never got a reply

[dmdilks]

Did you have all the latest drivers for XP or Not. Just remember that this is a user to user forum.

All the yelling and jumping up & down might not do any good here. They could have at lease waited to April.

8.1 - 1.72%
8.0 - 7.53%
Win 7 - 46.42%
Vista - 3.63%
XP - 31.24

[xphero]

my needs are unimportant ....

the needs of the thousands of people who have bought this board and wish to run xp / vista with it are important

unless they have saved their drivers or still have the driver cd/dvd (optical storage is so dead) they're screwed



the fact that gigabyte removes existing online drivers is despicable

[cjapeterborough]

So I guess you will have a problem with microsoft support and XP also?

Anyone who really needs them can find them easily enough on the web

For example

http://drivers.softpedia.com/downloadTag/G1.Sniper+3

AS the above post says this is a user forum not directly linked to Gigabyte (I often wish it was btw)

Perhaps you should direct your wrath  and contact Gigabyte directly through the official support channels?

[xphero]

wont have a problem with ending microsoft / xp support since its not needed to run a decent xp install

its stupid to rely on unofficial sites for drivers. i've cross checked drivers for a few boards between asus / gigabyte and softpedia ... many drivers for specific boards are missing or outdated

official driver support / download is a MUST ... and removing vista / xp drivers after only 1½ years is unforgivable ... almost the same as saying: f*** you customers

i have contacted gigabyte twice about this but never got a reply