Hi, slightly off topic, but still related to the thread content. How do you guys search the Microsoft Update catalog effectively? It may just be me, but I find its search to be incomplete for lack of a better word.
For example, I have a laptop that has a Realtek ALC255 assembled by Acer, but they stopped releasing updates for it several years ago. If I search for DEV_0255, the top result I am presented with is this:
- Version: 6.0.9692.1
- Date: 3rd of June 2024
For some sheer luck, it was submitted by Quanta and is for Acer systems so it has the HDXSSTACERNB.inf file I need, so far so good, recent enough. However, erpster96 posted a link for 969
4.1 a week ago in post
#3142
that is also for Acer, also having the INF file I need and is newer than what my search showed (in fact, after that 9692 release, the next version in the search results is some 96
52 from months ago).
Surely there isn't any significant change between 969
2 and 969
4, but that's besides the point, what I am trying to get at is the search results not showing the full picture. erpster96 also posted a link for 9697.1 a couple of days ago that, while being for a manufacturer other than mine (so unusable for me), also has entries for ALC255 and it didn't show up in my search. Note that I was searching for the device ID alone, not adding the subsystem to it as to not restrict the search to a single vendor.
Another example with worse outcomes, an ALC293 that is also listed in the 9692 release for Acer I had downloaded. Searching for DEV_0293 lists this as the latest version:
- Version: 6.0.9475.1
- Date: 30th of January 2023
Searching for device & subsystem IDs shows the latest being:
- Version: 6.0.9319.1
- Date: 28th of February 2022
What gives? Not even the 9692.1 release appears in those results, or any other for any manufacturer also using that codec that is newer than that. And there is an explicit entry matching that DEV_ID/SUBSYS_ID combination in the INF I got, it's not that what is matching is a compatible ID instead. Because all of the results begin with "Realtek Semiconductor Corp. - MEDIA" I thought of searching for that instead, hoping to get an updated list, yet the top results were even older (already sorted by last updated) top one being from 23rd of August 2021...
So I'm dumbfounded, does anyone know the reason for this behavior? How can one effectively search through the Microsoft Update catalog? I was half expecting to get a list of releases where most of them wouldn't apply to my system, needing to comb through them all to find those that do, but not even that.
I have been downloading the ones you guys post links to keeping a more or less up to date installer for my system, but I was wondering if there is a way to separate the wheat from the chaff. At least with the catalog website allows for search, it is even more complex if one wants to do it in the websites of each manufacturer.
Realtek HDA/UAD/Component Drivers
