Three Wise Men

Just recently I got a brand new AMD HD6850 graphics card. My old Nvidia 8800 GTS started showing its age, so a replacement was in order. AMD’s HD68xx series presented an excellent price/performance ratio, so I got me one. I was sailing into the unknown seas here, it has been a while since I had ATI/AMD graphics card. I heard that fglrx drives got better and that support is decent. Oh boy, I was wrong …

Warning: This article is now obsolete. Catalyst 11.4 drivers that are now available, and also shipped with Ubuntu 11.04, support 68xx series out of the box.

Recently I wrote about installation of Windows 7 on HP Compaq 2230s. I had a few problems with device drivers which were resolved by downloading Vista drivers from HP site and installing them. My initial idea was to be able to use all devices on the notebook. I was specially interested in notebook fingerprint sensor and its capability to login to Windows account by using my fingerprint scanner.

The notebook has an OEM version of AuthenTec AES2810 fingerprint scanner. After installation of HP device driver fingerprint reader will be recognized and you will see fingerprint sensor. Since Windows 7 got a new Biometric Framework it is only prudent that the framework will get its own configuration section in Drivers and Hardware section. But this is where ASE2810 fails. When looking at Start->Control panel->Hardware and Sound->Biometric Devices you can see the AES2810 device but Windows 7 tells you that it is unavailable. If you are interested how this can be solved then read on!