.INF file?

[Dave Plaza]

Hi Folks,

Hope someone can help with this query, I've been searching the web for an answer but to no avail.

Not actually sure if this is the correct section for this posting, so apologies if not!

I know that a .INF file describes your driver and the device it controls, to the Windows operating system. And part of the.INF file holds a hardware id or a compatible id that identifies that the driver is the correct driver for the hardware.

So firstly I'm a little unsure of the difference between a hardware id and a compatible id. I know that these are both vendor assigned id strings, and i think that it was back in Win7 when compatible id's were accepted...

But my main question concerns where do these id's actually reside - For example, if i plugged a Network card onto a PCI bus - would the Network card send an IRP to the bus controller containing it's ID, and then the systems device installer take these ID's and try and find a match in the .INF file? And if this is so, does this mean the hardware or compatible ID resides on the Network card?

Many thanks for the help

 

[code65536]

I could be wrong, as I'm not 100% sure, but I think the compatible ID is based on the device class.

As for the hardware ID in Windows, that is made up of the main device/vendor IDs, the subsystem device/vendor IDs, and the revision. Those IDs along with the class code are stored on and provided by the device.

 

[Dave Plaza]

Hey, thanks for having a go at this question for me, i appreciate the help

I understand what the hardware ID is in relation to Windows and how you would license Windows.

But looking at it in relation to the .INF file for installig a driver -

I'm guessing that the ID string is stored on a ROM on a network card (as per my example). The hardware ID string would be a vendor defined string that would only cover that card, and the compatible ID string would be a vendor defined string that could for example cover a whole bunch of their network cards.

Then the systems device installer takes these ID's and tries to find a match in the .INF files, and if it does, installs the driver.

This kind of makes sense to me now, i hope that it's right

Thanks