Important Notice

The pages on this site contain documentation for very old MS-DOS software, purely for historical purposes. If you're looking for up-to-date documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

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Microsoft Windows uses device drivers and dynamic-link libraries (DLL) to
support a variety of features, such as audio adapters and language-specific
sorting. Many such drivers incorporate the Microsoft Windows installable
driver interface, which allows Windows and Windows applications to install
and use a driver by using a generic set of functions.
 
About the Audio Drivers
 
An audio driver is a dynamic-link library that provides a set of functions
Windows applications can use to generate sounds through an audio device.
 
For more information about audio drivers, see the Microsoft Windows
Installation and Update Guide.
 
About the Language Libraries
 
A language library is a dynamic-link library that provides a set of
functions that Windows applications can use to sort characters in foreign
languages. Microsoft provides a default set of language libraries that cover
a wide range of languages.
 
About the Installable-Driver Interface
 
An installable driver is a dynamic-link library that exports a DriverProc
function and processes messages, such as DRV_OPEN and DRV_CONFIG, which are
sent to the function. Although the standard Windows device drivers, such as
the display, keyboard, mouse, and printer drivers, do not use this
interface, it is recommended that the interface be used in all other device
drivers. One advantage of using the installable driver interface is that a
driver can be installed using the Drivers icon in Control Panel. This
eliminates the need to develop a custom-installation program for each
driver.
 
For more information about the installable driver interface, see the
Microsoft Windows Programmer's Reference in the Microsoft Windows Software
Development Kit (SDK).
 
 
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