Devices.ppt - Slide 1.ppt.pptVIP

MCTS:70-680 Configuring Windows 7 Chapter 4 – Managing Devices and Disks Lesson 1: Managing Device Drivers and Devices Lesson 1: Devices and Drivers What are Device Drivers? Installing Devices Troubleshooting Conflicts Managing Drivers via Group Policy Driver Signing Agenda What are Device Drivers? Overview File Types File Locations Managing Devices and Drivers Software that is required to support a particular device Enables the features of the device instructs the OS how to communicate it on the bus or port to which it connects. MS ships drivers for many common devices and nearly all buses with the operating system A minidriver?handles device-specific features on behalf of a system-supplied driver. For some types of devices, even a minidriver is not necessary. For example, modems can typically be supported with just installation files. If a device can be serviced by one of these drivers, the hardware manufacuter might have to write only a device-specific?minidriver. What is a Device Driver File Types Drivers are normally made up of .exe, .sys, .dll files. Occasionally (seems more common with more complicated devices, i.e. video cards) there are other types of files present as well), like: .wdf = Windows Driver Foundation libraries .kmd = Kernal Mode Driver File Locations %WINDIR%\System32\drivers which contains: .sys files .wdf files folders for language regions (contains .mui files to support Multilingual User Interface subsystems %WINDIR%\System32\ contains .dll and other files for more complicated devices %WINDIR%\Inf contains the .inf files for all drivers that ship with Windows or get installed later. Driver Files C:\Windows\System32\drivers Windows drivers must have an information (INF) file in order to be installed An INF file is a text file that contains all the information that the Setup components must have in order to install a driver, including: Driver name and location Driver version information Registry information Windows INF files do not contain i