What are the categories of drivers

Under Windows 9x, drivers can be divided into sound card drivers, graphics drivers, mouse drivers, motherboard drivers, network device drivers, printer drivers, scanner drivers, and so on, according to the hardware support they provide. Why is there no CPU, memory driver? Because CPU and memory are available without a driver, the vast majority of keyboard, mouse, hard drive, floppy, monitor, and standard devices on the motherboard can be driven with standard drivers from Windows, with the exception of other specific features. If you need to use the optical drive in DOS mode in a Windows system, you will also need to install the drive driver in DOS mode. Most graphics cards, sound cards, network cards, such as built-in expansion cards and printers, scanners, external modems and other peripherals need to install the device model is compatible with the driver, otherwise can not play some or all of its functions.

Drivers can generally be obtained in three ways, one is the purchase of hardware with a driver, the second is the Windows system with a large number of drivers, and the third is downloading drivers from the Internet. The final approach is often to get the latest drivers.

Driver packages for use with Windows 9x typically consist of a few. vxd (or. 386),. DRV,. sys,. dll, or. exe files, most of which are copied to the Windows System directory during the installation process.

How does Windows know what devices are installed and what files to copy? The answer lies in the. inf file. The. inf is a file that describes device installation information that was introduced from the Windows 95 era, using specific syntax text to describe the type of device to install, manufacturer, model, The file to copy, the destination path to copy to, and the information to add to the registry. By reading and interpreting the text, Windows knows how to install the driver. Nearly all hardware vendors currently provide drivers for Windows 9x with installation information files. In fact, the. inf file can be used not only to install the driver, but also to install software that does not have anything to do with the hardware, such as Windows 98, which supports the Windows Update feature, and the system part that is downloaded when the update uses the. inf file to explain how to install the part.