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Although drivers for most hardware are contained in other files, commonly of file type .sys, a few core drivers are compiled into hal.dll. Kernel mode device drivers for devices on buses such as PCI and PCI Express directly call routines in the HAL to access I/O ports and registers of their devices. The drivers use HAL routines because ...
The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores low-level settings for the Microsoft Windows operating system and for applications that opt to use the registry. . The kernel, device drivers, services, Security Accounts Manager, and user interfaces can all use the regis
In computing, the Windows Driver Model (WDM) – also known at one point as the Win32 Driver Model – is a framework for device drivers that was introduced with Windows 98 and Windows 2000 to replace VxD, which was used on older versions of Windows such as Windows 95 and Windows 3.1, as well as the Windows NT Driver Model.
WDM is the driver model used since the advent of Windows 98, whereas KMDF is the driver framework Microsoft advocates and uses for Windows 2000 and beyond. In general, since more features like power management and plug and play are handled by the KMDF framework, a KMDF driver is less complicated and has less code than an equivalent WDM driver.
When the sound card uses a custom driver for use with the system supplied port class driver PortCls.sys or implements a mini-driver for use with the streaming class driver, applications can bypass the KMixer completely and use the kernel streaming interfaces instead to directly interact with audio driver and reduce latency. Windows 98 includes ...
Drivers are provided by .VXD files or, since Windows 98, the newer WDM drivers can be used. [2] However, the MS-DOS kernel stays resident in memory. Windows will use the old MS-DOS 16-bit drivers if they are installed, except on Windows Me. In Windows Me, DOS is still running, but Windows will ignore any attempt to load its device drivers when ...
The ASPI manager software provides an interface between ASPI modules (device drivers or applications with direct SCSI support), a SCSI host adapter, and SCSI devices connected to the host adapter. The ASPI manager is specific to the host adapter and operating system ; its primary role is to abstract the host adapter specifics and provide a ...
Windows Driver Frameworks (WDF, formerly Windows Driver Foundation), is a set of Microsoft tools and libraries that aid in the creation of device drivers for Windows 2000 and later versions of Windows. It complements Windows Driver Model, abstracting away much of the boilerplate complexity in writing Windows drivers.