Windows Drivers; Versions AudioScience traditionally sells our Professional Audio Cards through Value Added Resellers (VARs) listed here on our website. The VAR that you have purchased the audio card from will also provide you the the appropriate driver to be used with their software application.
-->This section describes the Windows Driver Model (WDM), and discusses types of WDM drivers, device configuration, driver layering, and WDM versioning. WDM simplifies the design of kernel-mode drivers that are written to run on multiple versions of the Windows operating system.
In this section
Topic | Description |
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To allow driver developers to write device drivers that are source-code compatible across all Microsoft Windows operating systems, the Windows Driver Model (WDM) was introduced. Kernel-mode drivers that follow WDM rules are called WDM drivers. | |
There are three kinds of WDM drivers: bus drivers, function drivers, and filter drivers. | |
For the most common kinds of devices, the Windows Driver Kit (WDK) supplies a sample set of fully functional system drivers. Individual sample drivers can be used as models when developing new drivers for similar kinds of devices. However, the system's drivers had an additional design requirement: to make it easy to develop new device drivers. Consequently, many of the system's drivers have a layered architecture so that certain drivers can be reused to support new drivers for similar devices. | |
Later versions of WDM generally support all the features available in earlier versions of WDM; that is, each new version of WDM is a superset of the previous WDM version. When possible, a cross-system driver should conform to the lowest WDM version on any operating system. |