| What is a Device Driver? |
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Your computer is composed of dozens of pieces of hardware and peripherals such as display adapters, disk drives, motherboards, keyboards, pointers, printers, and modems. These device drivers wouldn’t work properly unless they communicate with the operating system. In order for the operating system to recognize, communicate with, and control a device, a special code called a device driver is used.
For example, if you buy a new printer, it will have an installation disk. The installation program contains device drivers so that your computer will recognize the new device. Windows does have numerous common device drivers preinstalled so it’s not always necessary to manually install the device’s driver.
Device drivers come in several varieties: monolithic, universal, virtualization, Win32 Driver Models, and Human Interface Drivers.
Monolithic Drivers – Monolithic drivers were common in Windows 3.1. This type of device driver provided everything a device needed in order to operate in the operating system including all services, hardware-access services, Application Programming Interfaces (API), and user interfaces. Windows 95 introduced a universal driver/mini-driver architecture which provided native basis driver services so that hardware vendors only needed to supply specific device codes for their hardware.
Universal Drivers – Universal drivers contain most of the code required for entire classes of devices. For example, a universal print driver allows a variety of different printers to communicate with the operating system. Specific printers may require further instructions which can be included in a mini-driver. Mini-drivers are small, simple drivers with additional instructions.
Virtualization Driver – Virtualization drivers (VxD) are 32-bit, protected-mode drivers. These drivers are used to manage system resources to enable simultaneous sharing of resources. For example, this allows several programs to use a resource or device at the same time. The acronym “VxD” references generic virtual device drivers with the “x” representing the type of device driver. For example, VDD is a generic virtual display driver while VPD represents a generic virtual print driver.
Win32 Driver Model – The Win32 Driver Model (WDM) architecture is supported by Windows 98. This architecture contains a set of input/output services used by both Windows 98 and Windows NT. This allows developers to write just one device driver that works on both operating systems.
Human Interface Device Drivers – Human interface drivers are used for input devices that humans use to interact with the computer such as keyboards, mouse devices, trackballs, joysticks, pointers, and game pads.
Plug and Play – Plug and Play enables the automatic configuration of device drivers allowing the operating system to detect the device and install the required device driver automatically.
If you’re curious about the devices and their device drivers on your computer, you can use the Device Manager to find out about them and make changes. Go to the Control Panel and click on Device Manager. This will list all devices on your system. Now right-click one of the devices and choose properties. Here you can explore the various tabs and options as well as update your device drivers if instructed to do some from the hardware manufacturer.
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