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From the Editor
With the availability of Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 (RC1), manufacturers and driver developers are busy testing compatibility and new features in their products. The Windows development teams are also releasing many new white papers and specifications to provide implementation guidelines for hardware manufacturers and driver developers. This edition of the Microsoft Hardware Newsletter highlights some recent publications from Windows development teams to help ensure that product designers and manufacturers succeed with Windows Vista.
- Annie Pearson
for the WHDC Web team
WHDC After Dark:
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Hardware Design for Windows Vista
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On systems that have BIOS firmware, Windows Vista and earlier versions of Windows install a Master Boot Record (MBR) during setup of the operating system. For earlier versions of Windows, some system manufacturers provide diagnostic and recovery applications in the preoperating system environment by installing an OEM-specific MBR to "hook" the boot process.
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For Windows Vista, an OEM-specific MBR can interfere with the boot process. An OEM-specific MBR also cannot be cleanly integrated with system recovery, which can cause problems for users.
Windows Vista supports the ability to load and execute a sequence of boot applications in response to a specific keyboard scan code. A new paper from the Windows Base team describes how manufacturers can integrate value-added functionality with the boot and recovery process by adding custom actions to the boot sequence of the Windows Vista boot manager.
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Windows Vista features significant changes to power management infrastructure, functionality, and user experiences. These changes impact all Windows components, including vendors' software applications and services. Application developers must be aware of the changes to power management in Windows Vista, and design and test their applications accordingly.
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A new paper from the Windows Base team describes power management best practices for Windows Vista applications, including correctly handling sleep and resume transitions, responding to common system power events, and designing for entertainment and media PC scenarios. The sample code in this paper is derived from the Power Event Monitoring Tool sample application, which registers for common power events and displays messages when notifications are sent, displays battery capacity information, and interactively sets thread execution state.
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To help developers succeed with power management in Windows Vista, the Windows Base team has also provided a new sample application, the Power Event Monitoring Tool, that illustrates the significant changes to the power management infrastructure, functionality, and user experiences in Windows Vista.
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This sample application shows how to register for common power events, including system power source and power plan personality change notifications, and displays a message on the screen when a notification is sent. It also displays current battery capacity information and enables application developers to interact with the SetThreadExecutionState API.
The Power Event Monitoring Tool sample application is provided in a Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 project that developers can compile and build. The sample requires the Windows Vista Software Development Kit (SDK).
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The Removable Storage team has provided a new paper that describes how Windows Vista supports personal storage devices such as USB flash disks, CD and DVD drives, and floppy disk drives. It discusses the driver stacks in Windows Vista and the access permissions that are set for removable storage devices in relationship to User Account Control (UAC) in Windows Vista.
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Many applications that are designed to work with removable media devices check whether the current user is logged on with Administrator privileges and then make requests as if those permissions apply for device access. Under UAC in Windows Vista, device access permissions behave differently from earlier versions of Windows. This paper provides information to help application developers to understand the related issues and apply best practices in designing device-plus-software products that work well with Windows Vista.
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The Windows Printing team has provided a Release Candidate 1 (RC1) version of the XPS Reference Raster Image Processor (RIP) to help manufacturers with development and testing of XPSDrv print drivers. The XPS Reference RIP provides XPS Document interpretation and rendering capability. It processes the XPS Document format and generates raster image data for testing in an XPSDrv filter or display on a screen. The XPS Reference RIP also provides implementations of key functions to support the processing of PrintTicket and color management operations. The download package on the WHDC Web site contains the installer, documentation, and release notes for the RIP.
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The XML Paper Specification describes the XPS Document format. A document in the XPS Document format (XPS Document) is a paginated representation of electronic paper described in an XML-based format. The XPS Document format is an open, cross-platform document format that allows customers to effortlessly create, share, print, and archive paginated documents. Microsoft has openly published the XML Paper Specification and made it available royalty-free.
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This download document presents programming guidelines and a set of reference pages for the Intel High Definition (HD) Audio device driver interface (DDI). Audio and modem drivers call the routines in this DDI to manage hardware codecs that are attached to an HD Audio bus interface controller.
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Hardware Design for Windows Server
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Network Access Protection (NAP) is a policy enforcement platform built into Windows Vista and Windows Server Longhorn operating systems that allows network administrators to better protect network assets by enforcing compliance with system health requirements. With NAP, the administrator can create customized health policies to validate computer health before allowing access or communication, automatically update compliant computers to ensure ongoing compliance, and optionally confine noncompliant computers to a restricted network until they become compliant.
NAP includes an API set for developers and vendors to create complete solutions for health policy validation, network access limitation, and ongoing health compliance. Check this TechNet Web site for information about capabilities and access to implementation resources for NAP.
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Going Deep with Windows Experts
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Software Architect Vlad Sadovsky and Development Manager Oren Rosenbloom discuss the new development framework for communicating with portable devices.
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Arun Kishan of the Windows Kernel Development team provides a deep whiteboard discussion of protected processes in Windows Vista. See also Arun's white paper on WHDC: Protected Processes in Windows Vista.
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Tips for Driver Developers
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We've published a new paper on the WHDC Web site to help Windows software application developers get started with device driver development, based on the Windows Driver Foundation (WDF) Kernel-Mode Driver Framework (KMDF). This paper introduces the basic concepts and terminology of kernel-mode programming and drivers, and points to resources to help application developers understand a different area of Windows programming.
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Windows Logo Program and WHQL News
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A preview of the specific requirements for the Premium logo program for the Keyboard and Mouse categories is available from the Windows Logo Program Web site.
These additions will be incorporated into Version 3.07 of the Windows Logo Program Suite, to be provided on October 2 for download from the WHDC Web site.
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The Windows Logo Program explicitly identifies the compliance level and the versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system for which the system or device product passed compliance testing.
A new announcement for the Windows Logo Program provides clarification for usage of logo artwork for both system and device logo levels under Windows Vista client SKUs.
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The announcement also clarifies issues related to the Unclassified program. Note that devices and/or drivers submitted under the Unclassified program are not eligible to use either the Basic or Premium logo artwork on device package. See announcement details for more information.
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