Display Drivers

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Windows Mobile Not SupportedWindows Embedded CE Supported

8/28/2008

The display device driver interface (DDI) is a subset of the Microsoft® Windows NT® DDI. The Windows Embedded CE operating system (OS) uses only the basic graphics engine functions and driver functions from the Windows NT display DDI.

Windows Embedded CE-based display drivers differ from Windows NT-based display drivers in the following ways:

  • Because Windows Embedded CE–based display drivers have consistent functionality, the graphics device interface (GDI) does not query a driver for information about its capabilities.
  • Windows Embedded CE–based display drivers cannot reject an operation as too complex and then call back into GDI to have the operation broken into simpler primitives. Because all Windows Embedded CE–based display drivers support the same functionality, the GDI separates complex operations before calling the display driver.
  • Windows Embedded CE–based display drivers are compiled as kernel-mode dynamic-link libraries (DLLs).

Windows Embedded CE-based and Windows NT-based display drivers are implemented similarly. For more information, see the Microsoft Windows 2000 Driver Development Kit (DDK).

In This Section

  • Display Driver Security
    Provides security information regarding display drivers and best practices for implementation.
  • Display Driver Migration
    Provides migration information for moving a display driver from one version of the OS to another.
  • Display Driver Reference
    Provides reference information for the display driver functions, methods, and any associated structures.
  • Power Management
    Describes the power management capabilities provided by the Windows Embedded CE OS.