This chapter describes the requirements and methods for installing a device driver on a machine using the Microsoft®Windows NT® operating system. Windows NT 4.0 installation methods are presented in this chapter. Most drivers are installed using the Windows NT 4.0 information (INF) files and Setup functions; however, some drivers (for example, network and multimedia) are installed with the legacy methods described in Appendix A. Driver installation can occur either during or after the installation of Windows NT on the machine.
When Windows NT is installed on a machine, the initial phase of the Windows NT Setup program installs only the minimum number of drivers needed for NT to run: keyboard, mouse, video, SCSI/Disk, and Machine/HAL. This phase of the Setup program is known as text setup. If you want the user to be able to install your driver during text setup, your distribution disk must include a text file named txtsetup.oem. The Text Setup section in this chapter discusses the format of this file.
After the text setup phase has been completed, the Setup program boots Windows NT and proceeds with the GUI-mode phase of the Windows NT installation. During this phase, the Setup program gives the user an opportunity to install network components.
After Windows NT has been installed, a user with administrator privileges can install drivers. This would be necessary, for example, if a device is added to the hardware configuration that was not present when NT was installed or if the user wants to install a different or updated driver for an existing device. For this situation, the following installation methods are available:
For driver types not discussed above, the driver developer can write an installation program and provide this with the driver. The installation program would use functions in the Setup API to set up the registry and to copy files.