K1/M1 Driver Development

[Whity]

eny news on ETA day for oficial driver release? and eny clue when beta version coming to testing?

[Whity]

just nodest that i have been turned of notest of windows firewalls etc so i was wondering could it be possible that on next driver update or in some time there will be drivers that windows knows killer NCI FNA firewall and you can monitor it on windows.

[slivers]

Any update on the January release? It's just past the mid-way point and it would be nice to know if they are still on target in January or if it will be later.

[slivers]

Any update?

[SoLoR]

Originally Posted by slivers

Any update?

Check Announcements and/or Beta Feedback & Discussion

[Arrakiv]

Yep, and if you do check out the Beta release, please let us know our feedback as we continue to develop the final release of the drivers. :-)

[MisterM]

Don't do it folks. If your M1/K1 works now, I would recommend not updating to the newest beta drivers if your card works currently. I've wasted the last 5 hours of my day off trying to get these new drivers to work to no avail.

I knew I should not have attempted them... after all the previous driver install issues I've had....but again... I was convinced to believe the company I supported in their "beta" stages would come through with a much needed driver update.

I purchased my first M1 in 2006 and had immediate problems. Support walked me through tirelessly until they determined my card faulty. They replaced it very quickly. I found a driver set that worked and stuck with it. On several occasions, I was prompted at start up to "update firmware" for new driver releases. Not once was this "update" process seamless.

In fact, this driver update became such a prevalent problem, that I only installed my M1 upon a fresh reformat. Consequently, there have been several occasions where my $200+ NIC card sat in a box for months. Luckily, I like a fresh copy of XP for my gaming habit.

Stupid me... I believed the new drivers would dig out some of the old bugs from the ancient beta release 4.1.36. My card worked great until this morning. I downloaded and attempted to install this set (yes... unfortunately I am WAY too familiar with the purge document on this site) and fell into some familiar holes.

I have 3 dedicated 32bit XP gaming machines, and only one of these (my most ancient relic running a P4 - 650 on an ASUS p4 board) did this driver set functionally boot with . Every attempt (even an attempt at this old version KillerSetup_v03010311_XP32_signed) left me with BSOD's, system hanging, and repeating cycles of driver installs that never finish.

For the moderators who wish to look up my customer history... this is the serial id of my current card (the third M1 I've owned) RMA'ed in 2006 (648FT01VZ). I kept my mouth shut watching the complaints the past year plus for the k1/m1 customers who actually spoke up on here. All you heard was crickets and more Xeno support. I kept quiet because the 4.1.36 drivers although with known issues, they worked. So those were the only ones I attempted.

I should have known better from my previous driver history... but for some reason I believed you were trying to help those that supported your company before it became popular.

CLIFF NOTES: IF your Killer K1/M1 works as is now.... DO NOT... I repeat.... DO NOT attempt the new driver set. I am now using my onboard Gigabyte NIC card on a month old fresh copy of XP.... AGAIN!

Sorry for the Rant,
Mike (a bigfoot customer and former supporter/promoter of the Killer Nic since 2006)

p.s. When this card works as advertised.... I couldn't ask for more. However, due to the driver difficulty and function problems over the years, this product is frustrating. Analagous to the fast BMW M3 you may have in your garage.... which spends half it's life with wrenches under it's hood.... instead of burning tires on the street. Driver updates should be seamless! And they have been a partial failure since the beginning. Running crossfire cards in 2005 and 2006 was easier than keeping this card running as it should.

[Arrakiv]

Many people seem to be having great experiences with the beta drivers. However, they are beta drivers. That means that they are not completed and have known issues and issues that we know we don't know about, which you seem to be experiencing. I am sorry to hear that you are having problems, but a beta release is for public testing, because we need the feedback from people who are willing to try it out and find any problems with the drivers, so that we can fix them. In-house testing can get them to this point, but we can't account for every possible configuration - beta testing, on the other hand, can get a much broader variety of machines and configs.

So if something goes wrong, please provide constructive, detailed feedback on the beta drivers so that it will not be wrong in the final release - ranting about software that is still in a beta phase will not help the stable release be any better.

[CaptainJack]

So when are they moving the installer out of beta? I pose this as a serious question, as there has been almost no consistency as to when it feels like working and when it doesn't. And regarding post by MisterM, I would consider that fairly constructive criticism and not just an empty rant.

[slivers]

Originally Posted by Arrakiv

However, they are beta drivers.

The upgrade works well for me in Win7. I've tried to help people here and have voiced my displeasure with Bigfoot Networks in the past.

This line strikes a cord in me. Maybe it would be more helpful to link the user the non-Beta drivers to use which do not exhibit significant problems in 64-bit environments, Vista, and/or Win7 environments as well as even in some XP builds.

Oh wait, you cannot.

So, before you sling around this being "beta" and to expect problems, please take a deep gulp of humility and realize that most of us are downloading this beta as the current "released" drivers are even worse, near alpha state.

Back on topic: I am happy development is back on. Is there a date on when the M1/K1 non-Beta drivers will be released?