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The Microsoft Hardware Newsletter provides manufacturers and developers the latest technical details for how to succeed with the Windows platform. Stay up to date on beta and final product releases, and specifications for new technologies. Subscribe now, if you're not already receiving the Microsoft Hardware Newsletter.
News for Kernel-Mode Developers
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Microsoft® Windows® often calls driver routines concurrently. To prevent errors when concurrent routines access shared data, you must synchronize access to any writable data that concurrent routines might share. Find out which driver routines can be called concurrently-and therefore exactly which data you need to protect.
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Tips and Directions for Platforms
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Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Enterprise Edition and Datacenter Edition, support hot-add memory only on x86-based ACPI platforms. Windows Server 2003 SP1, Enterprise Edition and Datacenter Edition, add support for hot-add memory on both x64-based and Intel Itanium-based platforms.
Delve inside the Windows kernel with internals experts Mark Russinovich and David Solomon. Written in collaboration with the Microsoft Windows product development team, this fully updated guide provides critical architectural insights that you can apply for better design, debugging, performance, and support.
Windows Server 2003 SP1 supports data execution prevention (DEP), a set of hardware and software technologies that perform additional checks on memory to help protect against malicious code exploits. This new operating system is another deliverable for Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative.
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Bus and Device-Class Tips and News
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Windows XP SP2 and later versions of Windows include native support for Secure Digital (SD) storage devices and an SD bus driver that follows the SDIO Standard Host Controller Specification 1.0. The SD bus driver supports storage and I/O devices that are compatible with the SDIO specification.
See also: SD driver documentation in the DDK
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The upcoming release of Windows Server 2003 SP1 includes these advances: Windows Firewall, server-side support for Windows Provisioning Services (WPS), updates to IEEE 802.11 Group Policy extension, enhancements to TCP/IP, and other networking advances also delivered with Windows XP SP2.
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Kits, Tools, Services, and Programs
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This edition of the DDK previews information about driver development for Windows Server 2003 SP1 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition operating systems. The DDK documentation includes several improvements such as table of contents advances, predefined filters for content, and new information about tools and samples. For example, extensive new documentation about Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) and the tracing tools included with Windows are provided in a new section, "Tools for Software Tracing." The documentation is available online on MSDN, and the SP1 Release Candidate along with the full Windows DDK is available for download by MSDN Professional subscribers.
Windows Server 2003 SP1 and later versions of Windows do not install driver packages with undecorated INF sections on x64-based systems. Undecorated INFs for Itanium-based platforms are allowed, to avoid breaking released driver packages. However, INF decorations are required by the "Designed for Windows" Logo Program for Hardware, so new driver packages for Itanium-based platforms must use decorated INF sections to qualify under the logo program.
DIFx tools simplify installation of driver packages and eliminate most end-user manual steps for installing a driver. The DIFx tools are designed to support the new device installation architecture for Windows codenamed "Longhorn," which ensures that driver installation packages cannot take actions that might conflict with other device installations, applications, or Windows components, and that any installed driver can be rolled back cleanly or uninstalled in the event of problems.
Read about device installation rules for Windows Longhorn.
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Security and Reliability
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Windows Server 2003 SP1 RC enhances security infrastructure by providing new security tools such as the Security Configuration Wizard, which helps secure servers for role-based operations; Data Execution Protection, which improves defense in-depth; and the Post-setup Security Update Wizard, which provides a safe and secure first-boot scenario.
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Events for Hardware Engineers and Driver Developers
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Participation by industry leaders is a key component of WinHEC. Join other expert speakers to share information about engineering and design innovations that will define the future of the PC and server platforms. The deadline for speaker presentation abstracts is December 31, 2004.
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 Edition for December 21, 2004 |
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