How to determine in C++ the video driver version? - c++

I've got a graphics application that appears to have funky behavior with certain combinations of video cards and drivers. I would like to capture in the application the version number of the video card driver to help with debugging. Is there an easy way to do this?

It depends on the operating system. In Windows, you use Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). There is an example here that gets the name of the operating system. To get the name of the video driver(s), replace "Win32_OperatingSystem" with "Win32_VideoController" in the example.

Related

Accessing device via existing device driver

I'm looking to write an application that will allow me to control music, etc with a remote control. The infrared receiver I have is built into my MacBook Pro which is running Windows.
What I want to know is how can I go about this? Most of the information I can find online is specific to writing Windows device drivers and I'm having trouble finding out how to use drivers that already exist for a device.
Is it absolutely necessary for me to write my own drivers or is there a way to use the drivers provided by Apple?
On Windows you communicate with a driver by first opening it using CreateFile and subsequently sending commands to it using DeviceIoControl. You need documentation for the driver's API though to understand what functionality is available through which control codes and what parameters they expect. Digging up that information is probably the hard part.

Can EnumDisplayDevices detect a device if it's drivers are not installed?

I need to deploy a hard drive image to a customer which on the first boot detects the graphics card type and installs the appropriate drivers. So what this means in terms of code is that I need to detect the deviceid of the graphics card in C++ without using GPU specific libraries like NvAPI or AMD SDK.
I know that EnumDisplayDevices can retrieve deviceids, so all I need to know is whether this is possible with EnumDisplayDevices, or whether the GPUs drivers must be installed before EnumDisplayDevices can detect it. How the function actually goes about obtaining this information isn't mentioned in the MSDN article.
Thanks,
Bill.
For my purposes I needed to know the name and model of the graphics card, and it turns out EnumDisplayDevices can't retrieve this information until the drivers are installed.

How to grab audio from windows? [duplicate]

I want to capture all audio that is played to the user (all sounds together). Currently I'm working on Windows but it would be nice if the code was cross-platform (but not necessarily). Is it possible to do it with OpenAL? How? Code examples would be great.
Language: C++
The only way to do this I believe is to create a replacement audio device driver that receives all audio requests, and then forwards them to the original device driver. There are a number of existing applications that work in this way including Freecorder, MP3myMP3 Recorder, SoundTap and Wondershare to name but a few (Google "Streaming Audio Recorder").
As for cross-platform, I would say not a chance since it is OS driver model dependent.
Depending on what you have in your system, some (not all) sound cards offer a "Stereo Mix" feature, which can be used like any other recording device. This is basically exactly what you want, as it is literally a mix of all stereo sounds being played.

Capturing Audio Out

I want to capture all audio that is played to the user (all sounds together). Currently I'm working on Windows but it would be nice if the code was cross-platform (but not necessarily). Is it possible to do it with OpenAL? How? Code examples would be great.
Language: C++
The only way to do this I believe is to create a replacement audio device driver that receives all audio requests, and then forwards them to the original device driver. There are a number of existing applications that work in this way including Freecorder, MP3myMP3 Recorder, SoundTap and Wondershare to name but a few (Google "Streaming Audio Recorder").
As for cross-platform, I would say not a chance since it is OS driver model dependent.
Depending on what you have in your system, some (not all) sound cards offer a "Stereo Mix" feature, which can be used like any other recording device. This is basically exactly what you want, as it is literally a mix of all stereo sounds being played.

How to get started with Drivers Programming under windows

I want to start learning drivers programming under windows .
I never programed drivers , and i am looking for information how to get started .
Any tutorials ,links ,book recommendations , and what development tool kit i should start with ? (WDF will be good one ?)
I really want to program following clock link text
Thanks for your help .
I would start by downloading the windows driver kit (WDK).
Afterwards, you decide which kind of driver you want. FileSystem driver? (probably not), RS-232 driver? usb driver? They all follow different rules and quirks.
The WDK comes with examples drivers for most kinds of drivers and should get you on track fast.
To interact with USB hardware you would be best served by looking at WinUSB or the Usermode Driver Framework. Usermode drivers are orders of magnitude easier, being able to use a C++/COM(kind of) framework and a normal debugging environment.
Writing kernelmode drivers should be reserved for stuff like video card, disk, and other latency/throughput sensitive drivers.
An even easier method would be to use libusb-win32 which is a C library that makes talking to a USB endpoint almost as easy as writing data to a file.
Must see resource for windows driver development, of course as addition to the WDK mentioned by Eric.