Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, and so forth. The name DirectX was coined as a shorthand term for all of these APIs and soon became the name of the collection. When Microsoft later set out to develop a gaming console, the X was used as the basis of the name Xbox to indicate that the console was based on DirectX technology. The X initial has been carried forward in the naming of APIs designed for the Xbox such as XInput and the Cross-platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT), while the DirectX pattern has been continued for Windows APIs such as Direct2D and DirectWrite.
In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and other computer programs to access hardware functions without needing to know precise details about the hardware being used.
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturing on August 15, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged Microsoft's formerly separate MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows products, and featured significant improvements over its predecessor, most notably in the graphical user interface (GUI) and in its simplified "plug-and-play" features. There were also major changes made to the core components of the operating system, such as moving from a mainly cooperatively multitasked 16-bit architecture to a 32-bit preemptive multitasking architecture, at least when running only 32-bit protected mode applications.
The Telephony Application Programming Interface (TAPI) is a Microsoft Windows API, which provides computer telephony integration and enables PCs running Microsoft Windows to use telephone services. Different versions of TAPI are available on different versions of Windows. TAPI allows applications to control telephony functions between a computer and telephone network for data, fax, and voice calls. It includes basic functions, such as dialing, answering, and hanging up a call. It also supports supplementary functions, such as hold, transfer, conference, and call park found in PBX, ISDN, and other telephone systems.
The Graphics Device Interface (GDI) is a Microsoft Windows application programming interface and core operating system component responsible for representing graphical objects and transmitting them to output devices such as monitors and printers.
VxD is the device driver model used in Microsoft Windows/386 2.x, the 386 enhanced mode of Windows 3.x, Windows 9x, and to some extent also by the Novell DOS 7, OpenDOS 7.01, and DR-DOS 7.02 multitasker (TASKMGR). VxDs have access to the memory of the kernel and all running processes, as well as raw access to the hardware. Starting with Windows 98, Windows Driver Model was the recommended driver model to write drivers for, with the VxD driver model still being supported for backward compatibility, till Windows Me.
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.
The Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS) is an application programming interface (API) for network interface controllers (NICs).
The Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) is a technical standard defined by Intel that specifies the operation of Serial ATA (SATA) host controllers in a non-implementation-specific manner in its motherboard chipsets.
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 registry. The registry also allows access to counters for profiling system performance.
The architecture of Windows NT, a line of operating systems produced and sold by Microsoft, is a layered design that consists of two main components, user mode and kernel mode. It is a preemptive, reentrant multitasking operating system, which has been designed to work with uniprocessor and symmetrical multiprocessor (SMP)-based computers. To process input/output (I/O) requests, they use packet-driven I/O, which utilizes I/O request packets (IRPs) and asynchronous I/O. Starting with Windows XP, Microsoft began making 64-bit versions of Windows available; before this, there were only 32-bit versions of these operating systems.
The Windows NT startup process is the process by which Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 operating systems initialize. In Windows Vista and later, this process has changed significantly; see Windows Vista startup process for information about what has changed.
UniDrv is a GDI-based Microsoft Windows universal printer driver and architecture for non-PostScript printers. It is used to simplify driver development of non-PostScript printers for printer manufacturers. Unidrv allows the creation of a printer-specific minidriver in the form of a GPD file, similar to a PPD file, which is much simpler than kernel mode driver development. Unidrv was introduced in Windows 2000 and replaced the Raster Device Driver (RASDD) interface used in Windows NT 4.0 and earlier versions.
In computing ntoskrnl.exe, also known as kernel image, provides the kernel and executive layers of the Microsoft Windows NT kernel space, and is responsible for various system services such as hardware abstraction, process and memory management, thus making it a fundamental part of the system. It contains the cache manager, the executive, the kernel, the security reference monitor, the memory manager, and the scheduler (Dispatcher).
Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) is the graphic driver architecture for video card drivers running Microsoft Windows versions beginning with Windows Vista.
The startup process of Windows NT 6 differ from the startup process part of previous versions of Windows.
Windows XP has been released in several editions since its original release in 2001.
Driver Verifier is a tool included in Microsoft Windows that replaces the default operating system subroutines with ones that are specifically developed to catch device driver bugs. Once enabled, it monitors and stresses drivers to detect illegal function calls or actions that may be causing system corruption. It acts within the kernel mode and can target specific device drivers for continual checking or make driver verifier functionality multithreaded, so that several device drivers can be stressed at the same time. It can simulate certain conditions such as low memory, I/O verification, pool tracking, IRQL checking, deadlock detection, DMA checks, IRP logging, etc. The verifier works by forcing drivers to work with minimal resources, making potential errors that might happen only rarely in a working system manifest immediately. Typically fatal system errors are generated by the stressed drivers in the test environment, producing core dumps that can be analysed and debugged immediately; without stressing, intermittent faults would occur in the field, without proper troubleshooting facilities or personnel.
Windows NT is a family of operating system versions produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system.
