Contents
What are Device Drivers. What is Device Manager. Vista Driver Store. Types of Drivers that Vista Supports. Typical look of Device Manager in Vista. Table of hardware's vista supports.
Device Drivers
Device drivers are the software programs, that helps the computer to identify and run the hardware installed in it or connected to it.
What is Device Manager
Device Manager is an Operating System feature that lets us view and change the properties of all devices attached to our computer.
What is Device Manager Used For
Device Manager is used to manage the hardware devices installed in a computer like hard drives, keyboards, sound cards, USB devices, and more. Also used to update the device drivers for a piece of hardware.
Driver Store
Vista has a library of drivers called the Driver Store. Path :- C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore
Driver Store
Any user can read and execute files in the Driver Store • No Administrator permission are required The Driver Store is created when Vista is installed • Windows Update can add drivers to it • Administrators can add other drivers to the store, even ones that are not Microsoft approved or signed
Three Types of Drivers Vista Supports
Best
WHQL-Signed by Microsoft
Signed by a third party
Worst
Unsigned
WHQL-Signed Drivers
Windows Logo Program • Signed by Microsoft’s Windows Hardware Quality Lab (WHQL) • Proves the driver has not been altered • Also proves the driver has been thoroughly tested so it won’t crash Windows The most trustworthy drivers • Can be installed by any user with no warnings
Installing and Configuring a New Device
Almost all devices are Plug and Play When you plug in a device • Vista looks in the Driver Store for a matching driver. • Messages like below will come.
Drivers Signed by a Third Party
Signed with digital certificates called “Authenticode Signatures” • Proves the driver has not been altered • Not tested by Microsoft, may cause Windows to crash
Found New Hardware Wizard
If Vista can’t find a signed driver,the Found New Hardware wizard appears.
Drivers Signed by a Third Party
If the user has not chosen whether to trust a publisher or not yet, this box appears, so the user can decide whether to trust that publisher.
Drivers Signed by a Third Party
If an Administrator has decided that publisher as trusted • The driver can be installed by any user with no prompts. If the publisher is not trusted • Only an Administrator can install the driver. • Installation will fail silently for non-Administrators.
Unsigned Drivers
32-bit Vista will show this box asking whether to install the driver. 64-bit Vista requires all drivers to be signed.
Unsigned Drivers
No guarantee that the driver has not been altered. No guarantee that anyone has tested it. • Driver may cause a system crash or contain a Trojan. Can be installed only by Administrators. • Can not be used at all on 64-bit Vista.
Device Properties
Double-click icon in Device Manager
Driver Tab
Shows version, and who signed the driver.
Error Icons in Device Manager
Question mark and yellow exclamation point indicate a missing driver or other configuration problem.
Device Manager Components
Computer (like uniprocessor, multi processor etc) Display Adapters CD/DVD-ROM Drives
Windows Vista OS Supports
Supports, No Drivers Needed Drivers not needed but for additional adapters drivers needed Drivers Needed. (Vista Basic rips and burns CD’s but not DVD’s and home premium can create and edit DVD’s) Supports. Drivers needed These are comes along with the processor and vista supports. Supports.
Floppy disk drives and controllers Human Interface Devices IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers ( It is a interface standard for connection of storage devices such as a hard disks, CD-ROM etc) Keyboard, Mice, Monitors and Ports like printer ports.
Network Adapters, Sound and Video card controllers
Processors (P4, dual core, quad core) System Devices like Numeric Data processor and Storage Controllers like hard drives, RAM controllers. Universal serial bus controllers
Drivers needed.
Supports. Supports.
Supports.
IEEE 1394 Bus Host Controllers.
Supports.
Windows Vista has more drivers built-in at launch than any previous version Windows - 19,500 in fact! Another 11,500 will be waiting via Windows Update too... In contrast, Windows XP only had 10,000 drivers on its CD, with only 2000 on the Windows Update service, so this is a major improvement.
Thank You