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Windows Vista Installation Support in Build 1805

Although a lot of Windows Vista and NDIS 6 development and testing has been going on at PCAUSA during the Beta program, Rawether for Windows Build 1805 includes only small changes from the previous release. These changes are almost exclusively related to installation.

Enhanced PCANUser Application

In previous Rawether releases this application was simply used to modify existing Rawether driver Service Control Manager (SCM) settings so a non-administrator could access the NDIS protocol driver. Using PCANUser was awkward because the setting would first have to be created by a separate application before PCANUser could be use to modify the settings.

In this release PCANUser has been modified so that it creates the NDIS protocol driver SCM entries and also modifies the entries so non-administrator users can access the drivers.

The application has also been modified so it can be called as a Custom Action from a Windows Installer:

Calling PCANUser this way during installation is one of the key steps in making a smooth installation of Rawether drivers on Windows Vista as well as prior Windows versions.

PCANUser source code is provided with the Rawether SDK. You cam make further modifications to suit your own needs.

Drivers Signed for Windows Vista

The PCAUSA NDIS 5.0 protocol drivers are non-PnP drivers that do not require a WHQL test for signing. This means that you must self-sign the Rawether NDIS protocol drivers for them to be installed properly on Windows Vista - especially Windows Vista x64 Edition.

An article about self-signing NDIS protocol drivers is available on the NDIS.com site at this URL:

Self-Signing NDIS Protocol Drivers for Windows Vista

The Rawether drivers provided in the Bin\Drivers folder have been signed by PCAUSA and install properly.

Prevent Collisions in Side-by-Side Installations

Since Rawether was introduced in 1997 thousands of products have been developed using the product. Unfortunately, a large number of them install unmodified versions of supporting Rawether runtime components.

If you ignore the potential presence of other products that use Rawether and blindly install modified versions of the Rawether DLLs and drivers, then it is likely that either your product or some other product (or both) will fail.

Sample Installer for Windows 2000 through Windows Vista

Since installation on Windows Vista is such an important issue this Rawether release includes sample Visual Studio 2005 setup projects that illustrate installation on Windows versions from Windows 2000 through Windows Vista (Setupx86 for x86 hosts) and Windows XP through Windows Vista (Setupx64 for x64 hosts).

These sample installer projects are actually the projects used by PCAUSA to make the downloadable Rawether Sample Executables that are posted on the Rawether.net website.

The key feature illustrated by these installer projects is calling the PCANUser tool to create the Service Control Manager (SCM) entries needed to allow the Rawether drivers to be run. They also illustrate the proper location of runtime components.

Of course, these installer samples cannot be used for your own product without making modifications.

You may also continue to use other installation tools (InstallShield, Wise, etc.) if you would prefer.

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