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Baltoro wrote: Initially, my appraoch is to use the source examples provided with the DDK, but, I'm wondering if testing something like that can destroy or damage my operating system, or the device drivers currently residing there.
Yes, in fact when I first started developing device drivers I was locked out of my operating system several times. It was quite embarrassing. I would highly recommend testing your device drivers in VMWare or VirtualPC. It is extremely easy to create a race condition in device drivers. It can be a challenge to repair the OS when a faulty driver is installed. Once I had to edit the registry from a boot CD to prevent an upper level filter driver from attaching. No more driver development outside of VMWare for me! I have since learned my lesson! 
There are additional benefits to running your test drivers in a virtual environment. It makes debugging the driver much easier. There is a gentleman named Dana Epp[^] who has a site dedicated to those seeking ring-0[^]. He has written a tutorial showing how to use WinDbg with VMWare[^].
I have found the following blogs to sometimes contain useful information:
A Hole In My Head[^]
Pointless Blathering[^]
It Goes To Eleven[^]
OSR online[^] is also a great resource. There are many knowledgeable engineers there who are willing to help out. I would highly recommend joining the discussion lists. See you there!
Best Wishes,
-David Delaune
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David Delaune,
Thank you very much for the excellent suggestions, that is exactly the type of information I was looking for, but, was completely oblivious to.
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Baltoro wrote: I'm wondering if testing something like that can destroy or damage my operating system
Oh yes!
Baltoro wrote: or the device drivers currently residing there
Deffinitely!
Baltoro wrote: If this is an evolutionary process
And about as slow. But more painfull.
Baltoro wrote: Any good suggestions
1) Ghost your system. You are going to need it.
2) Never set a test driver to auto start. You can get into a boot-bsod-boot-bsod loop.
3) Get Walter Oneys book.
4) Use a DDK sample to start with. Say, a simple IO, or a write to buffer/read from same buffer driver to het a feel if you like.
I have spent about 10 years writing drivers, still learning stuff!
Morality is indistinguishable from social proscription
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fat_boy,
Thanks, I was worried about actually loading and executing, and the potential for irrevocably damaging essential components.
Now, I know,...
Thanks again, I really appreciate it.
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Hey guys,
I'm developing an application that a user can design and print labels for CDs and DVDs. I'm wanting to add the functionality to print directly on the disk if the printer has the capability. The question is: How do I find out if the printer can do direct disk printing? The .Net framework doesn't seem to provide an interface for interacting with such printers. I have wrote a number of manufactures asking for advice but they didn't seem interested in talking to me when they found out I wasn't apart of some big company. Can you pros here a CP help me? 
Cheers,
Richard
If you could rent a programmer a hour and a half for a dollar and a half, how much would he charge for 10 hours?
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Certain windows OS'es such as Vista and Windows Server 2003 with SP1 can create partitions more than 2TB in size using GPT. Suppose I have such machine with single partition spanning 3TB in size under drive letter D. Would a regular windows XP 32bit machine (which do not support GPT by the way) have any problems connecting to that partition when mapped to \\machinename\D$? Any issues when reading or writing data?
Anybody has experience doing something like this?
Thanks.
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The SMB protocol used by Windows file sharing doesn't deal in disk offsets. It asks the server to open the file for it, passing the filename to get a handle. The fact that D$ is the root of the filesystem is irrelevant.
The SMB protocol supports 64-bit offsets for read and write operations, so you can manipulate very large files (> 4GB).
DoEvents: Generating unexpected recursion since 1991
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I'm not sure you understood the issue, either that or I'm not seeing definitive answer to my question in your reply.
See this link:
http://www.carltonbale.com/2007/05/how-to-break-the-2tb-2-terabyte-file-system-limit/
Most of the older windows operating systems (including windows xp 32 bit) only support MBR partitioning meaning they cannot create or work with partitions more than 2TB in volume. To get around this problem Microsoft introduced GPT partitioning in latest operating systems. With GPT there are virtually no limits on the partition size.
The problem here is not connecting to the drive root or working with files >4GB. It's whether the system that does not support GPT such as windows xp 32bit can connect to a network share >2TB in size and work correctly with it.
I would hope that network protocol would abstract it all away. However, I have read reports that xp had problems writing to linux (yes, I know, slightly different) network share that was 3TB in size. So I wanted to ask if anyone knows if that really is a problem or not.
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I am building an x64 kernel mode driver with WDK 6000. Two intrinsics are used: __readmsr and __writemsr.
As mentioned in MSDN Library, it requires to include <intrin.h>. But there is no such file in the inc folder and the subfolders of WDK 6000!
What is the correct include file for these intrinsic functions? Thanks!
Maxwell Chen
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The intrinsic functions are a compiler feature, not a WDK feature. Look in the compiler Include tree. For example, C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\include.
DoEvents: Generating unexpected recursion since 1991
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I bought a fanless Via-based system with 256 mb RAM from eWayCo and have been trying to get it to boot Win XP, which it claims it should be capable of (not just the embedded version). The machine has no floppy drive or cd drive, just an IDE slot.
Using an IDE-CF adapter on another computer, I was able to install XP to the CF card, disable virtual memory and install all the XP updates.
Plugging the adapter into the fanless system, I can boot and it displays the XP boot menu ("Your computer didn't start correctly last time...") and I choose safe mode. Everything goes fine until it trys and loads gagp30kx.sys, which I understand is a Via video card driver. I modified boot.ini to allow me to boot into VGA mode, which just displays a blank screen.
I know this is a long shot, but any ideas on how I might be able to get this thing to boot?
Thanks!
modified 12-Jul-20 21:01pm.
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We recently went through this with a (VIA) Jetway ITX board.
Try installing the operating syatem from an external USB CD drive.
You may have to make changes to the BIOS settings to get the system to boot from the CD.
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I've tried this with a couple of USB CD drives, and I was unable to get the device to be recognized so that I could off of it. Do you know of any boot environment, like the old windows boot disks with CD support, that I could use to load drivers for the cd driver to start the installation?
edit: this would have to boot off a flash drive
modified 12-Jul-20 21:01pm.
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The motherboard's bios should support booting from a CD. The windows XP installation CD is bootable.
On our machine we did have problems with the factory BIOS settings. The system would not boot from a USB CD. I finally solved this problem by enabling all appropriate USB options.
Another possibility is to attach the required hardware (CD, Floppy, etc.) directly to the motherboard.
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There is a site "bootdisk.com" or "bootdisc.com" that has tons of bootable images.
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I ended up getting this working by making a flash drive a bootable XP install.
Thanks for the suggestions
modified 12-Jul-20 21:01pm.
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You should install on the hardware the box needs. Just install to a normal harddisk on the fanless system, then use another comp to pull an image and write that to the CF-card.
Cheers,
Sebastian
--
"If it was two men, the non-driver would have challenged the driver to simply crash through the gates. The macho image thing, you know." - Marc Clifton
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I don't have a CD drive on the fanless system and I am unable to boot my computer with off a usb cd drive I have. I've tried booting over PXE but I can't find any free software that seems to work and I've tried creating an image in a virtual machine with very generic hardware cloning the harddrive contents to a CF card, but that didn't boot either.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
modified 12-Jul-20 21:01pm.
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I don't understand, if the system has an ide slot, (40 pin parallell ATA), why can't you connect both an HD and a CD to the cable and make an installation on the HD?
When you have installed the HD then you move an image to the CF card.
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So I went to look at a printer issue tonight, and there's no real issue, but when I finally got an invoice printing, it takes several minutes to print a single document.
I haven't worked with dot matrix for about fifteen years, so I'm a little rusty, but I'm guessing it's printing 'fancy' instead of draft mode. I may be wrong, but it just looks like if I set it to draft, it won't get through all three sheets. Is this a valid concern? I cant test now as the printer is very elsewhere.
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Does it self test ok?
Has anybody been playing with the dip-switches?
Is handshaking ok?
Is the print-head motor and gearing/belts ok?
modified 1-Aug-19 21:02pm.
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It works, it just takes more than two minutes to print a one page invoice.
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Brady Kelly wrote: it won't get through all three sheets.
Changing to Draft mode won't change how hard the pins strike the paper, so give it a try. The current mode, however, may be double-striking, or using a font that's wider than normal to make a clear third copy. It's worth playing with it, though, and you can't hurt anything (so long as you remember what the original settings were and restore them later). You might also check the settings to see if bi-directional printing is enabled. That can make big speed difference.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Hi
I have a problem. I want to detect USB Disk, but when I use GetDriveType, fuction return 3 drives instead 1 (it also return floppy disk and remote hard drive). I what to know alternative of GetDriveType.
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Hi,
you can use WMI classes to get more details, such as the interface ("USB").
However it is not that easy, and it keeps getting more and more complex to
figure out a general solution as more device types emerge: you have to discern
USB floppies, USB hard disks, USB memory sticks, USB DVD drives, etc.
However an ad hoc solution to a specific problem is most certainly doable,
given time and lots of googling.
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]
This month's tips:
- before you ask a question here, search CodeProject, then Google;
- the quality and detail of your question reflects on the effectiveness of the help you are likely to get;
- use PRE tags to preserve formatting when showing multi-line code snippets.
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