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Understanding and Maintaining Windows XP Device Drivers

The purpose of this lab is to examine some of the applications included with your Windows XP installation that allow you to examine, update, and troubleshoot device drivers. The applications we will look at include:

  1. Sysedit
  2. Device Manager
  3. Hardware Update Wizard
  4. Windows Event Viewer
  5. System Restore

Sysedit is a text editor that allows you to examine the legacy device driver configuration files autoexec.bat, config.sys, win.ini, and system.ini. These four files are text files that contain configuration information for applications developed for older operating systems such as DOS and Windows 3.1. The remaining applications allow you to directly modify the Microsoft Windows Registry, a database that contains the configuration settings for all of your Windows XP functionality. The Registry is not a text file and cannot be edited directly. Therefore, the special applications are required.