THE WALL
GUFF AND STUFF
COME ON, HAVE YOUR SAY! We want to hear what you think. Add to these discussions or email your views (in fewer than 250 words) to techlife@futurenet.com. All correspondence becomes the property of TechLife and is subject to editing. Letters must include full name, streets address, suburb, state and phone number to be considered for print publication. Address and phone details will not be published.
Where are the 5GHz media streamers?
I currently use the WD TV Live, what is frustrating with this product is that it operates at the 2.4 GHz band and doesn’t recognise the 5Ghz band, which is e ectively ignoring the advantages of routers such as the ASUS RT-AC87U.
Is there a streaming device that TechLife could recommend as an alternative that takes advantage of the 5GHz band for use people attempting to stream HD.
GREG JOHNSON
Ed replies: In Australia, there don’t seem to be any players that are both as polished and friendly as the WD TV Live and that also support 5GHz Wi-Fi. If you’re willing to take a slight leap, we’d suggest jumping on Amazon and buying a Roku 2 or Roku 3, which start at US$70 do support 5GHz. e caveat is that they come with US power adapters, so you’ll need an adapter plug to use them. And being from the States, they won’t hook into any local Aussie streaming services, obviously.
Windows 10 driver woes
I have a desktop with a Nvidia 250GT graphics card which doesn’t work with the latest driver. I recently upgraded to Windows 10. A er upgrading Windows automatically tried to upgrade the display driver resulting in the computer crashing. It could only be restarted in Safe mode. A er rolling back the driver and restarting, the driver is again automatically updated and the computer crashes.
I have tried using the Windows 10 downloadable tool that can block updates and drivers to hide the driver update but the driver still appears in the list of updates and tries to install itself. I have also set ‘Device Installation Settings’ to ‘Never install driver so ware from Windows Update’. e only way to prevent this driver update is to set update to ‘Notify Schedule Restart’. But by doing this no updates are installed.
Is there any way I can prevent Windows trying to update this driver?
CARL FRANCIS
Ed replies: It sounds like you’ve tried every method available through Windows Carl (barring turning o Windows Update completely, which we wouldn’t recommend), but we’ve noticed that Nvidia seems to o er two Windows 10 drivers for your graphics card (as in the screenshot below), one slightly older which may work if the latest doesn’t. It could be time to seek the wisdom of the crowd on this one too: have any other TechLife readers experienced and overcome similar driver problems in Windows 10?
“I CURRENTLY USE THE WD TV LIVE, WHAT IS FRUSTRATING WITH THIS PRODUCT IS THAT IT OPERATES AT THE 2.4 GHZ BAND AND DOESN’T RECOGNISE THE 5GHZ BAND”