Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Davide Massarenti

Sridhar Chandrashekar

Donald Thompson

Ghim-Sim Chua

Majeed D Salman

Pierre Jacomet

Anthony S Chavez

Michael Meulemans

Gideon Andreas Yuval

Jinsong Yu

Avronil Bhattacharjee

Gerald Cermak

Yaron Weinsberg

R Donald Thompson, Iii

Cosmin A Corbea

Maxim Grabarnik

Daniel Li

Automatically generating code used with device drivers for interfacing with hardware. The method includes receiving a machine readable description of a hardware device, including at least one of hardware registers or shared memory structures of the hardware device. The method further includes determining an operating system with which the hardware device is to be used. The method further includes processing the machine readable description on a code generation tool to automatically generate code for a hardware driver for the hardware device specific to the determined operating system.

Software interface for a hardware device

A garbage collector includes a core, and extension handlers to support collection of objects of a designated managed class. The handler, which may be implemented in managed code, receives notification of garbage collection phases, and receives control from the core when the core encounters an object of the designated class. The handler can then thread together discovered objects of the designated class, walk a list of objects and detect whether any are unreachable, and/or provide an executor for the designated class. The core notifies handlers about progress in tracing strong pointers, tracing weak pointers, pointer update, pinning, weak pointer forwarding, and untraced pointer relocation. A pointer can be marked as untraced, so the core ignores it during pointer tracing phases. If the core encounters an object which has a weak pointer field, the core can pass control to a handler's tracing method. The core may perform generational garbage collection.

Garbage collection extensibility via managed code

Serialized data from broadcast services is provided to a broadcast server for transmitting to one or more client devices. The serialized data may correspond to shared data, private data, or control data. Data is scheduled for transmission based on weighted priorities including quality of service metrics. The transmission frame is arranged according to a frame protocol that includes provisions for a table of contents indexing system for the shared data. Packets of shared data are formatted based on criteria that is known by the particular broadcast service and corresponding application that is resident on the client device. The client device receives the table of contents at the transport layer, and notifies applications of data that will be available in the next frame. Applications submit prioritized requests to the transport layer, requesting data in the next frame. Data is retrieved by the transport layer, and deserialized by handlers for each application.

Frame protocol and scheduling system

A runtime execution environment may manage resources executing cooperative threading on a single physical thread. One example can scan eligible activation records linked to threads on a method process and can execute one of the activation records. This example can create a new activation record for a new method invoked for the executed activation record and link the new activation record to the executed activation record. Further, this example can loop back to re-start the method.

Cooperative threading in a managed code execution environment

In a managed code execution environment in which resources are constrained, resources may be managed in accordance with weak references for which semantics are extended.

Abstracted managed code execution

A runtime execution environment may implement code access security by annotating a delegate to a publisher with a list of potential callers to the publisher. If a permission verification process for at least the listed potential callers results in even one indication of no trust, an exception may be thrown.

Delegate registration in a managed code execution environment

A system and method for providing help contents uses a framework for unified help access that provides a single point of entry through which a user may access help contents relating to all system software and hardware components. The help contents from different sources are organized into a taxonomy structure that allows a user to navigate easily to locate relevant help topics. The contents of the help topics may reside locally or be accessible over the Internet, and may contain static as well as active components. The unified help framework is extensible, allowing the help topics and the taxonomy to be updated by means of update packages. The application for providing the unified presentation of help topics may be launched by a user as well as from programs.

System and method for providing help contents for components of a computer system

Described is a system and method for searching multiple disparate search engines. More particularly, a search system provides search engine manager that operates to provide a standard interface with which one or more search engines may be queried through a search client. The search system being extensible, allows for the addition of search engines beyond the time of the initial construction of the search system. Each search engine, being wrapped around a COM (component object model) object, first registers with the search system through the wrapper, the wrapper providing communication between the search engine manager and the search engine. When initiated by a client, a query is transmitted to the search engines in series, the search engines execute the query in parallel, and the results are returned asynchronously to the client.

System and method for searching multiple disparate search engines

One or more electronically-accessible media including electronically-executable instructions that direct an apparatus to perform actions including: inserting a type signature tag into a serialized binary blob to serialize an object, the type signature tag including a type signature based on an object type of the object; and transmitting the serialized binary blob. An arrangement including: a signature table having multiple entries, each respective entry of the multiple entries associating a respective object type with a respective type signature, each respective type signature created responsive to a structural representation of the respective object type associated therewith. An apparatus including: one or more media having electronically-executable instructions; and one or more processors capable of executing the electronically-executable instructions to perform actions including: receiving a serialized binary blob; and deserializing an object by extracting a type signature from the serialized binary blob, the type signature derivable from an object type of the object.

Signature serialization

The present invention manages information about support incidents on a computer. The invention gathers information about a support incident, associates the support incident with a support channel, and collects current and historical information from the computer. Implementations of the invention may also package and send the gathered and collected information to a support vendor. The invention comprises methods of performing these tasks, systems that perform them, computer-readable media that contain computer-executable instructions that when executed perform the methods or provide the systems, and data structures stored on computer-readable media having fields that represent software objects useful in performing the methods or providing the systems.

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Davide Massarenti