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documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

 
An information file is an ASCII text file that contains lists of disk names,
filenames, and related information that Setup and Control Panel use to
install device drivers and virtual devices. The file lists the names of the
installation disks, the device driver and virtual-device files, and all
dependent files that must be installed with the device drivers and virtual
devices.
 
Windows supplies default information files, named SETUP.INF and CONTROL.INF,
that list all drivers and related files. Setup uses these files to install
Windows, then stores the files in the Windows SYSTEM directory so that Setup
and Control Panel can read the files whenever the user requests changes to
the Windows configuration. Setup and Control Panel use information in
SETUP.INF and CONTROL.INF to let the user replace the existing display,
network, keyboard, and pointing-device drivers or to install new printer
drivers and fonts.
 
Important:  Never modify or replace the SETUP.INF or CONTROL.INF files.
 
Setup and Control Panel can also read OEMSETUP.INF information files to
install drivers that are not listed in SETUP.INF or CONTROL.INF. Setup and
Control Panel search for and read OEMSETUP.INF files whenever the user
requests the installation of unlisted drivers.
 
To install a driver from an OEM distribution disk, Setup or Control Panel
reads the lists of available drivers from the OEMSETUP.INF file and displays
this list to the user. When the user selects a driver, Setup or Control
Panel copies the driver and its associated files from the specified
distribution disks to the WINDOWS directory. Setup or Control Panel also
updates settings in the initialization files, such as WIN.INI and
SYSTEM.INI, by copying the new settings to the sections specified in the
information file.
 
Setup also copies OEMSETUP.INF files to the WINDOWS directory (for network
installations), or the SYSTEM directory (for nonnetwork installations) as
OEMx.INF. The x is a unique number. This process applies to the installation
of pointing devices, keyboards, and screen displays.
 
Information-File Syntax
 
Information files consist of one or more sections. Each section starts with
a section name, enclosed in brackets ([]), and contains one or more entries
(or information lines). A setting specifies the names, settings, and
sections that Setup and Control Panel use to identify and install drivers.
 
Each setting consists of one or more parameters, separated by commas (,). A
parameter specifies information such as the driver filename, driver
description, and the filename of associated files. In some cases, a
parameter specifies the name of a related section in the information file
that contains additional settings for the driver.
 
The following example illustrates the general syntax of information files:
 
; Example OEMSETUP.INF information file
 
[disks]
    1 =. ,"Generic Printer Distribution Disk",disk1
 
[io.device]
    1:TTY.DRV,"Generic / Text Only","DEVICESPECIFIC"
 
[io.dependent]
    tty.drv = 1:tty.hlp
 
This example has three sections, [disks], [io.device], and [io.dependent],
that specify the files that Control Panel needs to install the generic
printer, TTY.DRV, and its associated help file. Information files can
include comments, but each comment must be preceded by a semicolon (;).
 
Whenever a filename is given in an information file it must have the form:
 
id:filename
 
In this example, id is a valid disk identifier and filename is a valid
MS-DOS filename. A valid disk identifier is any identifier given in the
[disks] section of the information file. This section names the distribution
disk or disks and assigns disk identifiers.
 
Information Files for Display Drivers
 
The OEMSETUP.INF file for a display driver must contain a [display] section.
The file may also contain the following sections:
 
[disks]
[sysfonts]
[fixedfonts]
[oemfonts]
[fonts]
 
Display drivers often have many dependent files such as files for standard-
and 386 enhanced-mode grabbers, startup logo modules, and system, fixed,
OEM, and user fonts. These sections fully specify the files to be installed
with the display driver.
 
When installing a display driver, Setup selects fonts by matching the aspect
ratio of the display to that of the font. For configurations using other
than code page 437, Setup asks MS-DOS for code-page information and selects
an OEM font from the [codepages] section based on that information. Because
only MS-DOS version 3.30 and higher supports the call for code-page
information, Setup may (depending on the MS-DOS version) rely on the defxlat
setting in the [data] section to retrieve code-page information.
 
Information Files for Printer Drivers
 
The OEMSETUP.INF file for a printer driver must contain an [io.device]
section. The file may also contain the following sections:
 
[io.dependent]
[disks]
[fonts]
 
Although Control Panel can install a printer without an information file,
Control Panel requires the file if the driver has any related files such as
help and font files.
 
If the user requests the installation of a printer that is not listed in the
CONTROL.INF file, Control Panel searches for printer drivers on the
specified disk. It will also look for an OEMSETUP.INF file and use that
information to copy any additional files the printer driver needs. Although
each entry in the [io.device] section contains a description for the driver,
Control Panel does not use this description. Instead, it scans for and
displays the description field in the driver's executable file.
 
Information Files for Network Installation
 
The OEMSETUP.INF file for a network driver contains [disks] and [networks]
sections, and a corresponding [netname.versions] section. The
[netname.versions] section specifies more sophisticated control over how the
network is installed.