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This newsletter contains archived content. No warranty is made as to technical accuracy of content or currency of URLs.
Advances for Memory Management in Windows
Windows SuperFetch received a good deal of attention in the past year, but it's just one of many enhancements to the memory manager in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. The enhanced memory manager uses virtual address space more efficiently that earlier versions of Windows. Some of the benefits:
• Administrators don't have to tune the system to prevent resource imbalances.
• The system can make better use of limited I/O bandwidth and scale better for server hardware and server applications.
• Address space layout randomization (ASLR) makes Windows more secure by randomizing the locations at which DLLs and executable images are loaded.
Most memory advances are transparent to applications and drivers, so existing code runs without modification. To benefit from some new features, however, developers should modify or relink their applications.
Read the new white paper, Advances for Memory Management in Windows, to learn what's new and to find out what changes in Windows can make your drivers and applications run more efficiently.
— The WHDC Web team
The MSDN Library is piloting a new beta machine translation feature that employs an innovative technology from Microsoft Research. The Windows Driver Kit (WDK) documentation--previously available in English only--is now available in seven languages. Try it, and submit your feedback on the translation quality or other suggestions for improvement.
Windows Server 2008 - Guidelines for the Hardware Platform
Optimum out-of-the-box performance is a major goal for Windows Server 2008 and influenced our design decisions for creating a new, dynamically tuned networking subsystem that incorporates both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols and improved file sharing through Server Message Block (SMB) 2.0. To supplement this, you can further tune server settings for incremental performance gains, especially when the nature of the workload varies little over time. Learn how in this new paper on the WHDC Web site--with performance recommendations for hardware and the networking and storage subsystems. This guide also contains specific tuning consideration for different server roles.
News for Windows Driver Developers
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The new release of Debugging Tools for Windows is now available. In this release, more components of the debugger are now redistributable. The first changes you will notice in this release are great updates and advances in the documentation. You will also find enhancements to the !analyze, !lmi, and !exchain debugger extensions and Symsrv support for resource-only binaries. Numerous improvements have been made to a variety of components and commands, including: improved DBGEng reliability, live KD for Windows Vista, context handling for .frame, .dumpdbg for minidump debugging, and advances in breakpoint list commands.
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The Microsoft Windows Documents and Printing team is interested in your feedback on how your organization is developing scanner drivers. This survey is designed for manufacturers of scanner drivers and hardware. Please take the time to complete this short survey.
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The Windows power manager cooperates with disk driver software to automatically spin down hard disk drive rotational media to reduce power consumption when the system is idle. A new white paper from the Windows team shows system manufacturers how to configure the disk idle detection power policies in their preloaded system images. This paper also shows how to use the PwrTest utility to observe the mechanics of disk idle detection.
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OSR, a leading consulting and training company, is presenting a series of seminars on Windows Driver Foundation (WDF) in 2007 and 2008. For details about the event and how to register, see OSR's Web site.
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What's New on the Blogs for Hardware and Driver Developers
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One of the most interesting set of requests for the WdfVerifier tool in its latest incarnation involved simplifying the attachment of debuggers to UMDF drivers. I believe that WdfVerifier can now be used to great advantage here. More.
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Everybody knows how an application communicates with a driver: calls CreateFile to open a handle to the PDO, and uses ReadFile(Ex), WriteFile(Ex), and DeviceIoControl to read data, write data, or send a control code. However, what about the opposite? How does a driver send data to an application (whenever it wants)? And how do drivers exchange data? More.
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It doesn't matter the type of resource the handle you are opening is backed by (a COM port, a file, a network share, a custom piece of hardware, and so on). It all goes through CreateFile (which should be a little obvious since the only way to open a type of handle is by calling it). The I/O manager creates a file handle for any resource type the same way. More.
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One of my new favorite things about UMDF is more of the framework's built in "cost of working with a driver" code. In this case, request cancellation! More.
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Answer to technical questions from Matt Ayers on the Windows Vista feature that allows you to use a USB key as virtual memory to enhance performance. More.
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Windows Logo Program Tools and News
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The Manufacturing Part Number is used in CNET Channel for providing product information to online retailers. The Manufacturing Part Number submission process on the Winqual Web site has been simplified with a new FAQ and help alias.
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Promote your Certified for Windows Vista products to consumers through the new "Win What You Love" Sweepstakes. Your donated products will be featured on the promotional site and given away to sweepstakes registrants as weekly and monthly prizes. Featuring your product on this site will drive traffic back to your product pages. The deadline for submissions is November 10.
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