Compatibility warning in version 7.5 M0

[pimjoosten]

I have been running DisplayLink for over a year without any warning on my Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit machine with a StarTech USB to VGA/DVI-I graphics adapter. After I recently purchased an ASUS MB168B+ USB monitor I wanted to do some tests on a Windows 7 installation (on the same machine). On my Vista installation I had recently updated the DisplayLink software to version 7.5 M0 without any issue or warning. However, when I wanted to install the same DisplayLink software on my Windows 7 installation I got the warning “DisplayLink installer has detected that your ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2300 (Microsoft Corporation WDDM 1.1) graphics driver could have compatibility issues when used with DisplayLink software. It is recommended that you check your laptop manufacturers or graphics card vendors website for an updated graphics card driver before using DisplayLink software.” (see attached thumbnail). I had never seen this warning before on my Vista machine, so I assumed it had something to do with the combination of Windows 7, DisplayLink and the driver. I found out that Windows 7 has a built-in driver for the graphics card (version 8.56.1.16, found under properties of the graphics card in device manager). Apparently this driver was newer than the Vista driver (version 8.471.0.0), so I assumed that the driver version was the issue here. It is important to note that the mentioned versions are the latest available drivers for my graphics card for Vista and Windows 7 respectively. Newer driver versions are not applicable to this card, probably because my laptop is already 5 years old (but still working well).

After trying various methods I finally succeeded in installing the Vista driver (v 8.471.0.0) on my Windows 7 machine, but the DisplayLink software still came up with the warning. So it was not the driver version.

I wanted to be sure that a planned upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 would not prohibit using the newly purchased USB monitor. If that was the case, I would send it back for a refund. When I wanted to post a question on this forum to find out what the issue could be (i.e. my confusion why I get a warning when installing DisplayLink on Windows 7 but not on Vista) I noticed the DisplayLink tool and ran that. The result was a warning that my driver may be out of date (see 2nd thumbnail). But that is a different warning than stating that there may be compatibility issues! The latter warning implies that some compatibility issues have been found which may affect running DisplayLink software with this driver. The former warning (out of date) is only a generic warning. Since there are no newer drivers available I can then put this warning into perspective and decide that if it works well, perhaps there is no issue at all.

My questions are:
1. Is my assumption true that the warning that there may be compatibility issues is just triggered by an old driver and not by a known compatibility issue? If so, I can just go ahead, keep and use my new USB monitor if it works without issues, knowing that there is no newer driver available.
2. How come I only get this warning on Windows 7 and not on Vista?

This issue has cost me over a day of labor to come this far. If my assumption is true I really think that the warning when installing the DisplayLink software should not state that there may be compatibility issues, but that my drivers are old. One can then better assess this warning and decide to go ahead or not. Moreover, the link “More information” leads to a Wikihow page with instructions for updating a driver via device manager. I think it should link to a DisplayLink page explaining more about this warning, including the fact that the program may still work well if there are no newer drivers available. Frankly, I assume there are many other users who have older hardware for which no new drivers are released anymore. These users may also be challenged by the same confusion as I was when installing the software.

Thanks in advance for your answer.
Best regards,

Pim Joosten