How to Write a Windows XP Driver

Summary: This document describes the steps you should take to create a Microsoft® Windows® XP driver for your device.
To create a Windows XP device driver:
1. Install the current Windows DDK. Read the system requirements and installation instructions in the stand-alone Getting Started HTML file supplied with the DDK.
2. Read Getting Started with Windows Drivers. This document guides you through the planning and decision-making process involved in making a Windows device driver from design through distribution. You should also look through the DDK documentation for device-type- specific information.
The DDK documentation set has the following device-type- specific nodes:
· Battery Devices
· Display and Print Devices
· IEEE 1284.4 Devices
· Interactive Input Devices
· Modem Devices
· Multifunction Devices
· Network Devices and Protocols
· Parallel Ports and Devices
· Serial Ports and Devices
· Smart Card Devices
· Still Image Devices
· Storage Devices
· Streaming Devices (Video and Audio)
· Devices Requiring VDDs
3. IDE bus are described in System Support for Buses. Driver development for most device types also requires a strong understanding of Windows operating system fundamentals, which are described in Kernel-Mode Driver Architecture.
4. Look through the driver source code provided with the DDK for a sample that represents your device type. Use the sample code where possible, modifying it for your device's specifics.
5. The sample code can enhance your understanding of Windows XP driver implementation requirements and speed your development time.
6. Compile and build your driver. This should be done using the Build utility and not some other compiler, because the Build utility has certain features that are necessary for driver development.
7. Obtain a checked build of Windows XP, so that you can test and debug your driver using free and checked system builds.
8. The checked build of Windows XP provides extensive kernel- mode debugging capabilities not available in the free build.
9. Create an INF file so that you can install and test your driver.
10. Test and debug your driver. You should use Driver Verifier, a program that puts your driver through a variety of tests, stresses, and deliberate failures in order to test its response and reliability in many extreme situations. You should also use a debugger. Microsoft provides several powerful debuggers that can monitor and debug kernel-mode and user-mode drivers. Using Driver Verifier in conjunction with these debuggers, on both the checked and free versions of the operating system, can be a powerful way to test your driver.
11. Provide an installation package so that customers can install devices that use your driver.
12. Submit your driver and installation package to Microsoft so that it can be digitally signed.
There are many resources available to you while developing your driver. The following sites describe some of the support available to you:
a. http://www.microsoft.com/ddk describes how to obtain the current DDK and provides other information, such as a driver development reading list.
b. http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev provides information, such as device-type-specific white papers and late-breaking news, and a list of resources available to driver developers.
c. http://support.microsoft.com/ support/ddk contains DDK product support information.

svchost.exe procees explored

You are no doubt reading this article because you are wondering why on earth there are nearly a dozen processes running with the name svchost.exe. You can't kill them, and you don't remember starting them... so what are they? So What Is It? According to Microsoft: "svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries". Could we have that in english please? Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into.dll files instead of.exe files. From a programming perspective this makes more sense for reusability... but the problem is that you can't launch a.dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (.exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born. Why Are There So Many svchost.exes Running? If you've ever taken a look at the Services section in control panel you might notice that there are a Lot of services required by Windows. If every single service ran under a single svchost.exe instance, a failure in one might bring down all of Windows... so they are separated out. Those services are organized into logical groups, and then a single svchost.exe instance is created for each group. For instance, one svchost.exe instance runs the 3 services related to the firewall. Another svchost.exe instance might run all the services related to the user interface, and so on. So What Can I Do About It? You can trim down unneeded services by disabling or stopping the services that don't absolutely need to be running. Additionally, if you are noticing very heavy CPU usage on a single svchost.exe instance you can restart the services running under that instance. The biggest problem is identifying what services are being run on a particular svchost.exe instance... we'll cover that below. If you are curious what we're talking about, just open up Task Manager and check the "Show processes from all users" box:
Checking From the Command Line (Vista or XP Pro) If you want to see what services are being hosted by a particular svchost.exe instance, you can use the tasklist command from the command prompt in order to see the list of services.
tasklist /SVC
The problem with using the command line method is that you don't necessarily know what these cryptic names refer to. Checking in Task Manager in Vista You can right-click on a particular svchost.exe process, and then choose the "Go to Service" option.
This will flip over to the Services tab, where the services running under that svchost.exe process will be selected:
The great thing about doing it this way is that you can see the real name under the Description column, so you can choose to disable the service if you don't want it running. Using Process Explorer in Vista or XP You can use the excellent Process Explorer utility from Microsoft/Sysinternals to see what services are running as a part of a svchost.exe process. Hovering your mouse over one of the processes will show you a popup list of all the services:
Or you can double-click on a svchost.exe instance and select the Services tab, where you can choose to stop one of the services if you choose.
Disabling Services Open up Services from the administrative tools section of Control Panel, or type services.msc into the start menu search or run box. Find the service in the list that you'd like to disable, and either double-click on it or right-click and choose Properties.
Change the Startup Type to Disabled, and then click the Stop button to immediately stop it.
You could also use the command prompt to disable the service if you choose. In this command "trkwks" is the Service name from the above dialog, but if you go back to the tasklist command at the beginning of this article you'll notice you can find it there as well.
sc config trkwks start= disabled Hopefully this helps somebody!

Undo an Accidental Move or Delete With a Keyboard Shortcut

Have you ever accidentally deleted the wrong file, or duplicated files while trying to select them with the mouse? Those types of mistakes can be extremely frustrating, but there's a really, really simple way to reverse them. All you have to do is use the Ctrl+Z keyboard shortcut, or use Edit \ Undo on the menu.
This is especially handy when you are trying to select a bunch of files, and accidentally move the mouse and copy them into the same folder instead:
Once you do that, just immediately use the Ctrl+Z shortcut and the files will be removed, although you will get the regular delete confirmation dialog:
This can be confusing, but since the accidentally copied file is now going to be removed permanently, it makes sense that you'll have to accept the deletion. Also note that this works in any version of Windows.

Show your name on SYSTEM CLOCK

This tip is absolutely and completely useless, and will even make applications that depend on timestamps have issues. It's mostly just to be used as a cool trick you can show off to your friends, so we're going to show you how it works. The way this trick works is by modifying the regional settings for the time format. Instead of using just AM or PM, you can put up to 12 characters of text in that field.
Start by opening Regional and Language Options from the start menu search box or the control panel.
On the Formats tab you'll see the "Customize this format" button, which you'll need to choose.
Select the Time tab, and then here's where we can make whatever settings we want.
I chose to set mine to "AM - Geek" so I could still see AM or PM, but you can choose any 12 characters for either field. Keep in mind that the PM symbol is only going to display during the "PM" hours. This does change more than just the displayed clock, so I'd advise not using this on a computer you do actual work on. Using the F5 key in notepad shows the "Geek" text as well:
It's one of those things that's interesting to know... just not very useful. It does work in XP as well.

Enable Equalizer in Windows media Player 12

We all know that the next version of Windows Media Player , which is WMP12 , comes with the upcoming OS from Microsoft, Windows 7. I happened to install the first beta, and when I tried to set the equalizer in WMP12 , I couldn't find it anywhere.
I searched every menu and preferences, but it wasn't there in any of them. Just when I thought its not there in the beta version, I finally saw the Graphic Equalizer button, in a tricky way!
It is a bit tricky, but it is possible to get the equalizer in Windows Media Player 12. If you are also one of those looking for the equalizer in WMP 12 , follow the steps below to get one.
1. Open Windows Media Player 12 in Library View (Default View).
2. Press Alt to get the menu, and navigate to View > Skin Chooser.


3. Select 'Revert' skin from the skins list (left side) and press the "Apply Button" button.


4 . You can now see the "Graphic Equalizer" button at the bottom right of the skinned WMP12.


5 . Set the default equalizer options to whatever you like.


Unfortunately, I couldn't find any way to enable the SRS- WOW effects. May be they haven't included them in the beta version.

How To: Manage Your Passwords With Credential Manager in Windows 7 or in Vista

Credential Manager is a new SSO solution that Microsoft offers in Windows Server 2003 , Windows XP and also includes in new generation operating systems Windows Vista and in Windows 7 .Single sign-on (SSO) is an approach that attempts to reduce the time users spend performing logon tasks and the number of passwords users must remember.Credential Manager is a central store for all of your usernames, passwords, and X.509 certificates. It's based on a secure client-side credential- caching mechanism.
To use Credential Manager in Windows Vista:
Open Control Panel.
Open User Accounts.
Click Manage My Network Passwords on the Related Tasks panel (on the left side of the window). You'll get a dialog box listing all of your stored usernames and passwords.
Add another username and password, or remove the existing ones or change their properties.
To use Credential Manager in Windows 7:

Microsoft's new generation operating system Windows 7(code named as Vienna) will include a system for managing the online IDs, logons, and passwords that you must manage for all of the Web sites you visit. Dubbed Windows Credentials , this feature utilizes a KeyRing for storing online credentials and a Credential Manager user interface. These settings can be backed up to and restored from a secure online vault. To access Credential Manager in Windows 7 go to Control Panel -> User Accounts -> Credential Manager Download Windows 7 if you doesn't have it