Driver Quality Ratings

Hardware drivers are a frequent source of problems with Windows, and with Vista Microsoft plans to set a higher bar for driver quality.

All Vista drivers must be digitally signed to indicate that they have met Microsoft’s quality testing criteria. On 32-bit editions of Vista, customers will be able to load unsigned drivers after acknowledging a warning that unsigned drivers may negatively affect overall system reliability. On 64-bit editions, Vista will not load unsigned drivers at all.

The company is also introducing a Driver Quality Rating system that rates drivers on the basis of the number and severity of crashes, as reported by Windows Error Reporting (WER), that are traced to the driver by Microsoft’s Online Crash Analysis team. That data is used to assign a score from 1 to 9 for a given driver, and the scores are grouped into color categories. Scores of 7 to 9 earn the driver a “green” rating, 4 to 6 gets a “yellow” rating, and 1 to 3 gets a “red” rating.

Microsoft will monitor online crash data and change the rating of a driver if its score improves or deteriorates. All drivers that meet Microsoft’s requirements for the Windows Certified label will start out with a green rating, but after the driver has been available for 120 days its score will be adjusted if WER data indicates that its reliability has changed. To maintain a green rating, a vendor whose driver has fallen into the yellow or red ratings must provide Microsoft with information about the vendor’s solution to the problem and release a new driver within 90 days. Microsoft will distribute the updated driver through Microsoft Update and Windows Update.