SmartCard Reader UMDF driver. Power down problems - driver

Working on a UMDF card-reader driver which connects to a software based SmartCard simulator thus allowing any PC/SC compliant application to interface to the SmartCard simulator.
Implementation based on Fabio Ottavi's project here: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/BixVReader.aspx
Works well except that the Windows SmartCard Service puts the driver into power-down mode (IOCTL_SMARTCARD_POWER -> SCARD_POWER_DOWN) when it reports IOCTL_SMARTCARD_IS_PRESENT. This happens when the driver is not been currently accessed by another application. The power-down generally happends 10 to 15 seconds after the card is present and I would like to prevent it happening.
Fabio mentions an undocumented Windows7 registry entry (CardDisconnectPowerDownDelay), however, this did not seem to work and I need a solution for XP as well.
Thanks...

Related

Create Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP NT, 7, 10

I come across the following link - https://github.com/felixrieseberg/windows95
Running windows 95 as Electron APP
Is it possible to create any existing application as portable or cross-platform using electron like above?
Can we use Windows 7 or 10 like above without Oracle Virtual Box or VM in an existing Windows 8 machine ?
Need more details on how it is possible to bring an application via electron
Thanks.
If I'm hearing you right, you're wondering if you can put a whole OS into a JS VM running in Electron - and then run your app on top of that.
Please don't do that. Electron is a fantastic cross-platform solution, but my project windows95 was mostly an educational experiment showcasing how powerful modern JavaScript and Electron can be.
This project uses another project called v86, which is capable of virtualising a x86 platform and display its output on a HTML element. Electron is browser-based so that is why this works.
But there are some limitations: It virtualises the x86 platform, which is pretty old by now, and when you have a look at the specification, it says it is at a Pentium-1 state. The demo links on the project's GitHub ReadMe also do not contain any "modern" OS because v86 does not support SSE(2). And since Microsoft requires its users to have a SSE2-compatible CPU* it is not possible to run anything like Windows 7 or newer (Linux may work, anyway).
OSses which support this kind of (deprecated) hardware, may work. As you can see from the "Compatibility" section of the project's ReadMe, some Linux versions and Windows XP "work" but older software, like OS/2, and even newer stuff, like Android, don't (really). So you can't say that everything will work as expected because the execution environment is really limited.
Now to answer your first point, no, I don't think that you can wrap every existing app into an Electron application and run it on new hardware. It may work with old software (which do not require SSE, if you use v86, and that would require a lot of hackery on the v86 side because it is designed to run OSses), but don't quote me on that.
* The section in question reads (at the time of writing) like this:
A Stop error occurs on computers that don't support Streaming Single Instructions Multiple Data (SIMD) Extensions 2 (SSE2).
Upgrade your machines with a processor that supports SSE2 or virtualize those machines.
(emphasis mine, source: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4088875/windows-7-update-kb4088875)

Why application's driver not working in windows 10?

An application's minifilter driver is working fine in windows earlier than windows 10. I want to make it work in windows 10 as well. Need help!!
I'm unable to figure out the causes in Windows 10 as the driver is perfectly working fine earlier to Windows 10 versions.
Driver requirements (superuser) including driver signing requirements (ms blog) have changed in Windows 10. You will most likely need a new driver as I think there will be no work-around for most driver problems in Windows 10.
The issue I had was due to an old audio driver and I had to manually pull down a different driver with a newer date from the hardware suppliers site.
If you want more information on the actual problem, look to the windows event log, or driver debug logs. For example Microsoft's website says:
If a signing problem exists, SetupAPI will log information about the signing problem in the log file. The name of this log file is SetupAPI.dev.log, and it is located, by default, in the Windows INF file directory (%SystemRoot%\inf).

Was compatibility for NDIS 5.x drivers removed in Windows 10?

I have an NDIS 5.x Passthru driver that was adapted from this sample. Obviously NDIS 6 has been available for quite some time, rendering 5.x obsolete, but backward compatibility has allowed the driver to continue to run in up to and including Windows 8.1 so the code has not been updated.
Now the same driver does not function on Windows 10. (Edited to add: The driver loads, but "netcfg /b" shows that it did not bind to any adapters.) The sys file is the same, installed the same way and with the same signature that works in Win8.1. I can't find any official source that NDIS 5.x compatibility has been removed from Windows 10, but I do find several people with the same problem who are speculating that is the case.
Do we know officially if NDIS 5.x compatibility been removed from Windows 10, and/or is there some kind of compatibility mode that can be activated to allow me to keep using my existing driver until I come up with Plan B?
No, NDIS backward compatibility was not removed in Windows 10. A new network class Installer called NetSetup was added with a shim for the old NetCfg calls. Apparently, there's a bug in the shim that causes drivers like mine to install but not bind to any adapters. They're assigning someone to work on it, and I will update this answer when there's a resolution.
Edited to add: Microsoft has decided not to resolve this issue because few are affected by it.

WebGL 100% Software Mode with RDP and no physical GPU

I want to run multiple Android Apps at the same time on a Virtual Private Server (VPS) under Windows Server 2008 R2, preferably with the chrome app ARChon Custom Runtime 1.2 - x86_64.
Problem is, there is abviously no WebGL with Remote Desktop (RDP) available, even if WebGL is told to have a software mode. No luck with VNC either. I already tried to override and use software emulation by setting the flag in chrome (chrome://flags) - no luck.
I managed to install Bluestacks. All apps are running just fine, so speed is not the problem! Unfortunately Bluestacks is no alternative, because it doesn't support multiple instances.
Any idea on how too force this thing to do it's work?

Foxpro 2.6 printing problem

In my school days, i developed a hotel management system in legacy programming language foxpro 2.6. Few months ago, i revived the application and its running pretty well on windows xp. But, i am stuck at printing. Right now i am printing the page to a text file. Afterward i manually open the file and call the print function on that.
I googled and found no effective tutorial or link or anything as to how can i get to print directly from foxpro 2.6. The printer is USB supported and i have tried the trick of adding another printer for virtual port LPT1 and then spooling. Nothing worked.
Later i downloaded an application which acts as a spooler and sends any file that is added to the specified directory to Printer. Still, no success.
Can anyone help me with a short example, a link or a tutorial which guides me to the printing settings in foxpro 2.6
Thanks !!
Install the printer and share it. You may need to set permissions to allow Authenticated Users to use the printer.
Add NET USE LPT1: \CRAIG\USBPRINTER to the logon script for the user's profile.
For help on logon scripts, look up "To assign a logon script to a profile" in XP Help.
Not true - it works perfectly well in Vista and Windows 7, as long as they are the 32-bit versions of those operating systems.
You might find the following useful. Disclaimer: I wrote it a long time ago.
Painless Legacy FoxPro Applications On Modern Networks

Resources