©2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Core Operating System
Updated: January 6, 2009
Applies To: Windows Server 2008 R2
Core Operating System includes the components that support the services that perform basic device management
for Windows. These components include Display Drivers, Plug and Play Devices, Name resolution for peer
communication, and Service Control Manager.
Hierarchy of Managed Entities
Managed Entities
Name
Description
Display Driver Models [
http://technet.microsoft.com
/en-us/library
/dd349460(WS.10).aspx ]
The Windows operating systems support a well documented,
standard architecture for implementing device drivers
for graphics adapters. With this model, neither the applications
running on your computer nor the operating system itself need to
know the details of any particular graphics adapter. Instead,
Windows sends high-level commands to the device driver provided
by the manufacturer of the graphics adapter. The device driver, in
turn, advertises the capabilities of the graphics adapter to
Windows. The device driver translates the commands into the
device-specific operations to cause the display output to show what
Windows requested.
Windows Display Driver Model [
http://technet.microsoft.com
/en-us/library
/dd349374(WS.10).aspx ]
Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 introduce a
new, more advanced driver model for display and graphics
hardware called the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM). To see
many of the advanced video capabilities of Windows Vista, such as
the Aero desktop theme, you must be using a graphics card that
uses a WDDM-compatible device driver. Graphics adapters that use
the older Windows XP Display Driver Model (XPDM) still work in
Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, but they cannot take
advantage of the advanced video features that a WDDM driver can.
For more information about the Windows Display Driver Model, see
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=82269 [
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=82269 ] on the Microsoft
Core Operating System
h