Understanding the General Format and Content of INF Files

A complete reference to the general structure and content of a Windows 95 INF file is in Device Information (INF) File Reference. A brief summary of that information follows because in order to become immediately productive with Infedit, it helps to have a model of the parts of an INF file in mind. The structural parts of an INF file are sections and items. Infedit builds an INF file one section and one item at a time.

An INF file is made up of a set of named sections. A section contains one or more items. Each section begins with the section name enclosed in square brackets. There can be any number of sections in an INF file, but there are a limited number of types of sections.

Sections can be put in any order in an INF file, but the sample modem INF files provided in the MDK have the different types of sections laid out in roughly the same order in each INF file so its easier to find sections of the same type in different INF files. For the same reason, the modem INF files you will find in the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM\INF directory on your Windows 95 computer have the types of sections in roughly the same order. But this is a convention only, not a requirement. The sections that deal with IDs are usually at the beginning of the INF file, sections that support modem-specific commands, voice modem commands, and Voice View are kept separate from each other in the middle of the INF file, and the modem responses are near the end of the file.

Each type of section has a particular purpose; for example, to add entries to the registry or to copy files.

Each of the items in a section contributes to that section's purpose and the syntax of each type of item that can be used in a particular type of section reflects that.

Three sections from a sample INF file are shown in the following, so you can more easily visualize an INF file being made up of sections and each section being made up of one or more items. The section named Manufacturer contains one item, the section named Microsoft contains two items, and the section named Strings contains four items plus three lines of comments.

[Manufacturer]
%Microsoft% = Microsoft
 
[Microsoft]
%Modem1% = Modem1, PCMCIA\RIPICAB-RC144ACL-3BD0
%Modem2% = Modem2, UNIMODEME9DF4BA4 
 
[Strings]
; This section lists strings that are used by the Modems control panel applet
; and the Install New Modem wizard.
; For example, Modem1 will appear as "Microsoft 144 PCMCIA Data Fax Modem".
ClassName = "Modem"
Microsoft = "Microsoft"
Modem1 = "Microsoft 144 PCMCIA Data Fax Modem"
Modem2 = "Microsoft 288 External Data Fax Modem"
 

All the types of sections that can be in an INF file are listed in the following summary table. The types of sections that are most often used in a modem INF file are listed at the top of the table.